Hit Piece on “AIDS Denialists” in MIT Technology Review

I will be reporting in detail on this tomorrow, but for now I would like to alert you to the following piece that appeared in MIT Technology Review yesterday:

How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism

Written by Anna Merlan, the article opens with a reminder of Bret Weinstein’s comments on The Joe Rogan Experience. As a reminder, Weinstein expressed that he found the alternative AIDS argument was “surprisingly compelling.”

We then move through “Covid denialism,” in which Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Aaron Rodgers are mentioned, on a meandering route to attack “AIDS denialists,” including me and Celia Farber. Here is a rather long quote from the article; read the rest of it at the link above.

The support seems to largely go both ways. Culshaw has written that even critical stories about Rodgers are helpful to the cause: “The more hit pieces are published, the more the average citizen—especially the average post-covid citizen—will become curious and begin to look into the issue. And once you’ve looked into it far enough, you cannot unsee what you’ve seen.” 

Culshaw and Farber have also been empowered by the new ability to command their own megaphones online. Farber, for instance, is now primarily active on Substack, with a newsletter that is a mix of HIV/AIDS content and general conspiracy theorizing. Her current work refers to HIV/AIDS as a “PSY OP” (caps hers); she presents herself as a soldier in a long war against government propaganda, one in which covid is the latest salvo. 

Farber says she sees her arguments gaining ground. “What’s happening now is that the general public are learning about the buried history,” she writes to MIT Technology Review. “People are very interested in the HIV ‘thing’ these days, to my eternal astonishment,” she adds, writing that Kennedy’s book “changed everything.” She says, “I answered his questions about HIV war history and was included and quoted in the book. This led to a chance for me to once again be a professional writer, on Substack.” 

Culshaw (who now uses the name Culshaw Smith) strikes a similar tone, though she is a less prominent figure. A mathematician and self-styled HIV researcher, she published her first book in 2007; it claimed to use mathematical evidence to prove that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. 

In 2023 she published another AIDS denial book, this one with Skyhorse, a press that traffics heavily in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, and which published Kennedy’s book on Fauci. She gained some level of notoriety when the book was distributed by publishing giant Simon & Schuster, leading to protests outside its headquarters from the LGBT rights advocacy groups GLAAD and ACT UP NY. Though Simon & Schuster appears to continue to distribute the book, that pushback has provided the basis for her new act: life after “cancellation.” She produced a short memoir last year that describes the furor—a history Culshaw presents as a dramatic moment in the suppression of AIDS truth. This is one of the books now available for free on Amazon through a Kindle Unlimited trial. (Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request for comment. Culshaw did not respond to a request for comment sent through Substack.)

As I said, I will be replying to this article in more detail in the next few days. Please spread the word, and let me know what you think in the comments.