HIV sceptics' claims out of date, court told
- February 13, 2007
THE former head of HIV research funding in Australia says the case of a man appealing his conviction for exposing women to HIV was out of date.
Flinders
University Emeritus Professor Peter McDonald chaired the Commonwealth
AIDS Research Grants Committee, the national body that directed
research funding for HIV and AIDS, from 1989 to 2002.
He told
the South Australian Supreme Court that the defence witnesses had
attacked HIV science from the mid-1980s, ignoring the vast advances
achieved since.
“I have sat in this court for many days and I
sort of wonder if the world began and ended in 1983 and 1984,’’ said
Professor McDonald.
The application for appeal by Andre Chad
Parenzee, 36, against his conviction on three counts of endangering
life has gone for more than three weeks.
In earlier hearings witnesses for Parnenzee, medical physicist Eleni
Papadopulos-Eleopulos and emergency doctor Val Turner, critiqued the
foundational scientific work of HIV and claimed that it was a figment
of early laboratory procedures and so did not exist.
But
Professor McDonald said the early work had pointed the way towards more
advanced research into the virus and fruitful treatments for AIDS,
although there was still much to learn about the mechanism of how HIV
leads to AIDS.
“There were some important observations made
then and they were seminal but there been there has been a huge amount
of development since that time.’’
“We should acknowledge the
seminal observations of (Luc) Montagnier and (Robert) Gallo but they
certainly have been superseded by the work of many hundreds, if not
thousands, of others.’’
Professor McDonald was the final witness in the hearings. The application was adjourned until late February.