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The European Journal of Public Health 2009 19(1):2-4; doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckn139
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.

Viewpoint

Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?

Pascal Diethelm1 and Martin McKee2

1OxyGenève, Geneva, Switzerland
2London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Correspondence: Martin McKee, e-mail: martin.mckee@lshtm.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   Black is white and white is black
 
HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is happening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions. Few, if any, of the readers of this journal will believe any of these statements. Yet each can be found easily in the mass media.

The consequences of policies based on views such as these can be fatal. Thabo Mbeki's denial that that HIV caused AIDS prevented thousands of HIV positive mothers in South Africa receiving anti-retrovirals so that they, unnecessarily, transmitted the disease to their children.1 His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, famously rejected evidence of the efficacy of these drugs, instead advocating treatment with garlic, beetroot and African potato. It was ironic that their departure from office coincided with the award of the Nobel Prize to Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi for their discovery that HIV is . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Defining and recognizing denialism
 

   Responding to denialism
 

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