Celia Farber

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Celia Farber is an author and activist who has been chronicling the AIDS epidemic since 1987, from a perspective that argues that AIDS is not caused by HIV. She wrote and edited a monthly feature column in SPIN magazine entitled Words From The Front [1987-1995], questioning whether the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

1 Her work
2 Response to criticism
3 Quotes
- 3.1 Quotes from Farber
- 3.2 Quotes about Farber
4 External link
5 References

[edit] Her work

See also: AIDS reappraisal

Farber describes herself as "a vocal and persistent critic of Political Correctness and the McCarthyism that reigned in Sexual Harassment law in the 1990s". During her time as a writer at Spin, Farber was romantically invovled with the magazine's publisher, Bob Guccione, Jr.^[1] In 1994, a Spin employee filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Guccione, Jr. and the magazine, alleging sexual discrimination and favoritism.^[2] Farber was a key witness in the ensuing trial, as the prosecution alleged that Farber's relationship with Guccione, Jr. led to her promotion and other job opportunities.^[1] Ultimately, the jury found that Spin editors had created a "hostile environment" and awarded $90,000 to the plaintiff; the remainder of the charges, including those of sexual favoritism, were rejected.^[1]

Farber's work emphasizes the role played by pharmaceutical side effects in the decline of health in many early AIDS patients; she also describes flaws in the methodology used by some early HIV & AIDS researchers. Her view of the American scientific community and the National Institutes of Health is that they are "totalitarian" structures.^[2]

The scientific accuracy and objectivity of her articles has been widely disputed, as her main medical reference is the work of Peter Duesberg. The Duesberg hypothesis, which holds that HIV is a harmless "passenger" virus unrelated to AIDS except by association, is considered pseudoscience by the mainstream medical community.

In 1999, Farber co-founded the non-profit organization Rock The Boat. The organization's mission was to arrange rock music concerts to stimulate independent thinking about subjects which the organization's proponents believed had been censored by the media. Farber has written for Newsmax, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Salon, Gear, the New York Press, Red Flags, and others. Her book Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS was published in July 2006 by Melville House Press. Farber was one of the original signatories to the letter establishing the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis.

Her Harper's Magazine article, Out of Control: AIDS And The Corruption of Medical Science,^[3] criticized the ethics and industry of antiretroviral drugs. In response to Farber's favorable presentation of the claim that there is no direct link between HIV and AIDS, the Treatment Action Campaign, a South African group campaigning for greater access to HIV treatment, posted a 37-page rebuttal. The rebuttal was written by eight prominent AIDS researchers and described over 50 errors in Farber's article, ranging from misleading implications and false statements to implications of sinister motives without evidence.^[4] ^[5] Farber and other AIDS dissidents posted a response to Gallo's rebuttal.^[6]

In June 2006, Farber wrote an article in the independent paper Los Angeles City Beat in defense of Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive AIDS dissident who refused to take antiretrovirals during pregnancy and whose 3-year-old daughter's death was attributed to complications of AIDS.^[7]

[edit] Response to criticism

In response to criticism of Out of Control, Farber claimed that she did not endorse the Duesberg hypothesis. She also claimed that she had approached the story as an objective journalist without a preconceived opinion, stating, "People can't distinguish, it seems, between describing dissent and being dissent."^[8] Her claim of objectivity was immediately disputed, with critics pointing to Farber's long history of arguing that HIV does not cause AIDS.^[9]^[10]^[11]

Farber also claimed that her article did not unduly disparage antiretroviral medication, writing that "...it does not, for example, say that all AIDS drugs are ghastly, or worthless." Farber also argued that, "...in each article where I have addressed HAART I have included, clearly, the fact that the regimens have absolutely helped people who are very sick."^[11] Again, her claims were disputed, with critics pointing to a number of prior writings by Farber in which she argues that HIV medications are deadly and ineffective.^[11] For example, writing on protease inhibitors in 2000, Farber claimed, "...a batch of new drugs flooded the market. Four years later, those drugs are wreaking unimaginable horror on the patients who dared to hope. What went wrong?"^[12]

[edit] Quotes

[edit] Quotes from Farber

"They call HIV the AIDS virus, and it's this generation's symbol of terror. It has come to rule us, our lives, our relationships, our sexuality. A microscopic dictator. We have erected buildings, organizations, conferences, and global programs in an attempt to placate it. It is a demon, and we worship it with our terror." (Spin, June 1992)

"What we mean when we say 'AIDS' is not a fixed reality or unified entity, but rather a boundlessly complex matrix of perception, projection and assumption. The 'truth' about AIDS (like the retrovirus itself) cannot be isolated from its surrounding tissue. It is inextricably bound within this tissue, which is made up of an inchoate roar of mass media and mass emotion, stretched across almost 20 years, distorted by innumerable passions and most chillingly, trapped inside a language that only permits the repetition of its own foregone conclusions. ('The AIDS Virus', for instance.)" (Impression, March 1999)

"I doubt whether any single idea has had such a meteoric impact on the global human psyche as the 1984 announcement by Robert Gallo that the 'probable cause of AIDS' had been found, that it was a virus, and that it was spreading sexually. To equate sex, which begets life, with death, was to turn humanity on itself. It would become the most defining psychic characteristic of the end of the century." (AIDS as Metaphor, Impression, November 1998)