[Dean's World] Celia Farber: BENNET'S PASSION

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Celia Farber:
BENNET'S PASSION
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1194022958.shtml


   It seems some people are labouring under the impression that Dr.
   Nicholas Bennet is a reliable source of information and
   interpretation. Let me start by reminding those who have followed the
   Eliza-Jane Scovill case that this is the same Dr. Bennet who declared
   the lung slides posted on justiceforej.com fake because "they did not
   look anything like the ones he had once seen on a TV show".

   In the present case, there is a crucial... let's be nice, factual
   error in Bennett's heartless if not mindless parroting of
   AIDStruth.org's message: The claims made that antiretroviral therapy
   would adversely affect childrens' health were judged to be false.

   This is simply misleading. As can be seen in my post above, the BBC
   was asked to consider a contrived accusation by Bergman et al. that,
   The programme falsely claimed that denying medication to children with
   AIDS will improve their health while appropriate treatment will kill
   them.

   The programme never made that sweeping and logically contradictory
   claim. The BBC acknowledged that the featured children DID seem to
   improve when taken off the medications. However, the BBC didn't feel
   it was justified to assume that their "underlying health" was
   improving. This is an altogether ridiculous proposition in this
   context, but the BBC's hand was forced as soon as they accepted the
   wording of the complaint. They never should have accepted it.

   Be that as it may, the BBC called the alleged claim "not justified on
   the basis of the evidence provided", but they didn't call it "false".
   As I've explained in my post, the missing evidence would have
   consisted in explaining about the viral load and CD4+ surrogate
   markers. I doubt that would have made the children off drugs look less
   healthy, or those on drugs less sick, to the viewers.

   Nick Bennett is a paediatrician, he should therefore be particularly
   ashamed of himself for acting the apologetic in this matter. Celia has
   already pointed out that the claim that no children died is false. Now
   look how lightly Bennett skates over the exposed unethical treatment
   of children enrolled in the trials without proper consent and
   protection:

   "A full investigation by the New York State department of health found
   issues only with incomplete documentation, and revealed that these
   were common at a national level. On that topic at least the program
   perhaps did a service, but that was hardly the point the denalists
   were trying to make."

   "On that topic at least, the program PERHAPS did a service"?! I
   certainly hope most paediatricians would have just a little more to
   say on this topic than that they're not quite convinced it was a
   service even to bring it to public attention.

   Apart from that, the last sentence of the Bennett quote is in blatant
   contradiction to the BBC's statement, which I have quoted in full
   above. The movie makers are not convinced"denialists"; neither were
   "denialist" issues their concern when they made the movie. Just
   because "denialists" are Dr. Bennett's sole passion, it doesn't give
   him the right to rewrite the movie and second guess the BBC on the
   intentions of its makers.

   Claus Jensen