Title: Deliberating International Science Policy Controversies: Uncertainty and AIDS in South Africa
Abstract: Abstract International science policy controversies involve disputes over cultural differences in the assessment of knowledge claims and competing visions of the policy-making process between different nations. This essay analyzes these dynamics in the recent controversy surrounding AIDS policy in South Africa. It develops the notion of an epistemological filibuster, an appeal to uncertainty in order to delay policy implementation, and shows the key role it played in producing an argumentative stalemate between President Thabo Mbeki and Western orthodox AIDS scientists that threatened millions of HIV-positive South Africans. Keywords: Intercultural Rhetoric of ScienceScience PolicyAIDS DissentThabo MbekiSouth Africa Acknowledgements Portions of this essay were adapted from the author's doctoral dissertation, advised by John Lyne. An earlier version was presented at the 2003 National Communication Association's Doctoral Honors Conference held at Bowling Green State University. The editor and reviewers deserve substantial credit for their comments and encouragement. Notes 1. Barton Gellman, "S. African President Escalates AIDS Feud: Mbeki Challenges Western Remedies," Washington Post, April 19, 2000, sec. A. 2. For example, see J. Blake Scott, Risky Rhetoric, AIDS, and the Cultural Practice of HIV Testing (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003); William N. Elwood, ed., Power in the Blood: A Handbook on AIDS, Politics, and Communication (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998); Valeria Fabj and Matthew J. Sobnosky, "AIDS Activism and the Rejuvenation of the Public Sphere," Argumentation and Advocacy 31 (1995): 163–84; Elli Lester, "The AIDS Story and Moral Panic: How the Euro-African Press Constructs AIDS," Howard Journal of Communications 2 (1992): 230–41; Alex Preda, AIDS, Rhetoric, and Medical Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 3. Theodore F. Sheckels, "The Rhetoric of Thabo Mbeki on HIV/AIDS: Strategic Scapegoating?" Howard Journal of Communications 15 (2004): 69–82. 4. G. Thomas Goodnight, "Science and Technology Controversy: A Rationale for Inquiry," Argumentation and Advocacy 42 (2005): 26–27. 5. 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Jasanoff, Designs on Nature, 255. 9. Jasanoff, Designs on Nature, 255. For a similar, rhetorically oriented approach to this issue, see John Lyne, "Knowledge and Performance in Argument: Disciplinarity and Proto-Theory," Argumentation and Advocacy 35 (1998): 3–10. 10. For a history of the filibuster, see United States Senate, "Filibuster and Cloture," http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/filibuster_cloture.htm/. 11. Currently sixty votes out of one hundred are required to pass a cloture motion. The number was previously sixty-six. 12. For a rhetorical history, see Timothy M. O'Donnell, "Of Loaded Dice and Heated Arguments: Putting the Hansen-Michaels Global Warming Debate in Context," Social Epistemology 14 (2000): 109–27. 13. President George W. Bush, quoted by US Climate Change Science Program, "The Climate Change Research Initiative," http://www.climatescience.gov/about/ccri.htm. 14. See Juliet Eilperin, "Censorship Alleged at NOAA; Scientists Afraid to Speak Out, NASA Climate Expert Reports," Washington Post, February 11, 2006, sec. A. 15. For example, see Leah Ceccarelli, "Manufactroversy: The Art of Creating Controversy Where None Existed," Science Progress, April 11, 2008, http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/04/manufactroversy/; David Michaels, "Knowing Uncertainty for What It Is," Nieman Reports 59 (2005): 75–77; Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney, "Framing Science," Science, April 6, 2007, 56. 16. S. Holly Stocking and Lisa W. Holstein, "Manufacturing Doubt: Journalists' Roles and the Construction of Ignorance in a Scientific Controversy," paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany, June 19–23, 2006. 17. For more information on AIDS dissent, see http://rethinkingaids.com/. 18. See Peter H. Duesberg, "HIV is not the Cause of AIDS," Science, July 29, 1988, 514–15; Peter H. Duesberg, "AIDS Epidemiology: Inconsistencies with Human Immunodeficiency Virus and with Infectious Diseases," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 88 (1991): 1575–79; Peter H. Duesberg, "Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Correlation but not Causation," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 86 (1989): 755–64; Peter H. Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS Virus (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1996). 19. For more on the disagreements between orthodox and dissenting scientists, see Jon Cohen, "Could Drugs, Rather Than a Virus, Be the Cause of AIDS?" Science, December 9, 1994, 1648–49; Jon Cohen, "Duesberg and Critics Agree: Hemophilia Is the Best Test," Science, December 9, 1994, 1645–46; Jon Cohen, "The Epidemic in Thailand," Science, December 9, 1994, 1647; Jon Cohen, "Fulfilling Koch's Postulates," Science, December 9, 1994, 1647. 20. 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The lawsuit was eventually dropped in the face of heavy pressure from AIDS activists and after the World Trade Organization clarified its intellectual property restrictions to exempt AIDS medicines. For more, see David Barnard, "In the High Court of South Africa, Case No. 4138/98: The Global Politics of Access to Low-Cost AIDS Drugs in Poor Countries," Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12 (2002): 159–74. 33. See Jack Lundin, "Nothing to Write Home About," Financial Mail (South Africa), April 24, 1998. 34. Alexandra Zavis, "Health Minister Backs Research on New AIDS Drug," Associated Press, February 6, 1997. 35. Tom Cohen, "State Panel Suspends Human Trials of Purported AIDS Drug," Associated Press, January 24, 1997. 36. Lundin, "Nothing to Write Home." 37. Charlene Smith and Aaron Nicodemus, "More Human Guinea Pigs for Virodene," Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), March 19, 1999. 38. Thabo Mbeki, "ANC Has No Financial Stake in Virodene," http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/1998/virodene.html/. 39. Mbeki, "ANC Has No Financial." 40. Mbeki, "ANC Has No Financial." 41. Mbeki, "ANC Has No Financial." 42. Thabo Mbeki, "Address to the National Council of Provinces," http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/1999/tm1028.html/. 43. Sparks, Beyond the Miracle, 286. 44. Anthony Brink, "AZT: A Drug from Hell," Citizen (South Africa), March 12, 1999. 45. Mark Schoofs, "Flirting with Pseudoscience," Village Voice, March 21, 2000, 56. 46. Thabo Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter," http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/docs/mbeki.html. 47. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 48. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 49. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 50. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 51. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 52. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 53. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter," emphasis added. 54. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 55. Mbeki, "Thabo Mbeki's Letter." 56. 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In reference to South Africa's resistance to meeting the WHO's target of three million people on ARVs by 2005, Tshabalala-Msimang recommended: "Raw garlic and a skin of a lemon—not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but they also protect you from disease." Sarah Boseley, "Aids Groups Condemn South Africa's 'Dr. Garlic,'" Guardian (UK), May 6, 2005. 68. Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel, "A Synthesis Report of the Deliberations by the Panel of Experts Invited by the President of the Republic of South Africa, the Honourable Mr. Thabo Mbeki," http://www.info.gov.za/otherdocs/2001/aidspanelpdf.pdf. 69. Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign and Others, Constitutional Court of South Africa, 2002 (5) SA 721 (CC). 70. 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While the Durban Declaration does not mention Mbeki by name, the editors of Nature make it clear that his policies are the inspiration for it in their preface to the article: "The declaration on these two pages was stimulated by the current controversy in South Africa about whether HIV causes AIDS." "Durban Declaration," 15. 78. "Durban Declaration," 16. 79. "Durban Declaration," 16. 80. Philip Strong, "Epidemic Psychology: A Model," Sociology of Health and Illness 12 (1990): 249–59. 81. Strong, "Epidemic Psychology," 254. 82. Sandra Panem, The AIDS Bureaucracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 136–46. 83. John Nguyet Erni, Unstable Frontiers: Technomedicine and the Cultural Politics of "Curing" AIDS (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 69–88. 84. Yole G. Sills, The AIDS Pandemic: Social Perspectives (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 155. 85. Charles F. Clark, AIDS and the Arrows of Pestilence (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994), 157. 86. World Bank, Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 284. 87. See Paul A. Robinson, Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 141–42. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMarcus ParoskeMarcus Paroske is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Visual Arts at the University of Michigan-Flint
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
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