MIT Magazine Writer Attacks Dr. Rebecca Culshaw Smith

Disinformation reporter bashes Culshaw, Amazon, Meta, Simon & Schuster, Spotify, SubStack, and more

Mother Jones Senior Reporter Anna Merlan is upset. Social media platforms—among which she carelessly lumps Amazon and Simon & Schuster—aren’t exerting enough control over their writers for Merlan’s liking. (1)

Among Merlan’s targets are two SubStack writers, Dr. Rebecca Culshaw Smith and Celia Farber, who often (but not exclusively) write about AIDS, the role of HIV in AIDS, and patients’ struggles. Rebecca—who most of our readers know is my writing partner on SubStack and transparency for those who don’t—has focused on the toxicity of drugs prescribed to treat and prevent AIDS, the suffering of many people who’ve taken those drugs, and lawsuits against the drugs’ manufacturers.

In her MIT Technology Review article, Merlan wrote, “Culshaw (who now uses the name Culshaw Smith) strikes a similar tone [to Celia Farber], 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.” (1)

She also noted that Rebecca didn’t get back to her when Merlan reached out on Substack.

First, let’s address Merlan’s comment that Rebecca didn’t communicate with her when Merlan reached out on SubStack. Was Rebecca obligated to do so?  No.

Second, let’s examine the implication that Rebecca is hiding behind a nom de plume; on SubStack, she uses her married name, Culshaw Smith.

As for being a mathematician—she has a Ph.D. in mathematics—and a “self-styled HIV researcher,” Rebecca’s interest in HIV transmission arose from work done for her doctoral thesis. The book she published in 2007, Science Sold Out, described how that work led her to question the role played by HIV in AIDS. (2) In 2023, it was republished and distributed with a new Forward as The Real AIDS Epidemic by Skyhorse and Simon & Schuster. (3)

Despite Rebecca being drawn into the world of AIDS by the mathematical irregularities she observed in rates of HIV transmission, I dispute Merlan’s dismissive categorization of her as an “AIDS denialist.”

Rebecca is a whistleblower. She is bringing the often-crippling effects of drugs currently used to treat and prevent HIV infection—via the incessant promotion of PrEP to healthy individuals and now, children—to a public from whom they’ve been deliberately hidden.

Rebecca’s newest book is The Truvada and PrEP Disaster. (4) It reveals why numerous lawsuits have been filed against Gilead Sciences, Inc., the maker of Truvada, a drug used both to treat and prevent HIV infection. However, Truvada—whether used for treatment or prevention—has life-destroying adverse effects that both Gilead and the AIDS activists pushing PrEP have worked overtime to conceal. Among the damages claimed in lawsuits are avascular necrosis (death of bone tissue), kidney disease including renal failure, loss of bone density that destroys teeth as well as bones, pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, lost earnings and/or loss of earning capacity. Here’s the story of one plaintiff in a Truvada lawsuit:

“Vanessa L. Naisha filed a Truvada lawsuit against Gilead in Delaware on July 11, 2019. Doctors diagnosed Naisha with HIV in 1986, and she began taking Truvada as soon as the drug hit the market in 2004. By 2009, Naisha experienced severe pain in her hips and loss of balance. In 2010, she had to use a wheelchair after her hips failed. She had two hip replacement surgeries in 2011 and suffered complications during the second surgery. She had to go to the Intensive Care Unit for a blood transfusion and did not regain consciousness until hospital staff ran electricity through her body seven times. Doctors said her bone mineral density was osteopenic [low]. It wasn’t until 2018 that she discovered Truvada might be to blame. [Naisha] put her trust in [the] Defendant with hopes of getting treatment for HIV. She was oblivious to the fact that all these years she was ingesting poison,” according to the legal complaint. (4)

Plaintiff Ricardo Wohler “says he has lost 17 teeth in just three years due to the drug,” Rebecca reported. Another, Eric S., had “what should have been an inconsequential fall in January 2018. This fall resulted in his forearm being shattered in several places with bone protruding through the skin. ... Eric says this injury was made worse due to the loss of bone density allegedly caused by Truvada.” (4)

The active ingredient in Truvada is “tenofovir disoproxil fumerate (TDF).” Rebecca uncovered a February 2024 study published in the European Journal of Pharmacology showing that more than half of the HIV-positive patients taking a drug that includes TDF will develop “HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder,” abbreviated as HAND. (5)

According to this study, “HAND affects mental and motor function, with increasing severity over time, and is often a sign of the transition from being HIV-positive to having a full AIDS diagnosis. In early stages, symptoms are minimal, including slowed extremity movements that do not impair activities. However, in the later stages it can render victims into a nearly vegetative state.” (5)

On June 11, 2024, Gilead agreed to pay $40 million to the more than 2600 plaintiffs in just one of the lawsuits regarding undisclosed adverse effects of TDF. The total number of plaintiffs in all current lawsuits could exceed 26,000. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has asked Gilead to set up a $10 billion account to cover all eventualities involved in settling every one of the lawsuits. (4)

These previously undisclosed facts about the horror of Truvada’s adverse effects and the tragic, deeply personal and painful plaintiff experiences are what Anna Merlan wants SubStack to censor. Books about these experiences with this toxic drug are the ones that Anna Merlan wants Amazon to ban.

As sad as it is, Merlan seems to have joined with those in our society who want to censor journalism and ban books. Merlan would ban books like Rebecca’s before they saw the light of day, but in spirit she might as well have joined those who want to ban books in school libraries, including some of childhood’s most beloved tales currently on banned books lists: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl; Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White; the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. These groups, with whom Merlan seems aligned—groups who think they know what’s best for the rest of us—also want to ban books they don’t approve of in public libraries: classics like Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And more—just Google it.

Is there really no difference between disallowing the publication of books and articles on subjects of which one disapproves, and banning existing books and articles?

I think not. Both represent the decline of American journalism. Despite working for a nonprofit organization named The Center for Investigative Reporting (which owns Mother Jones), Merlan doesn’t seem to have done a very in-depth investigation before taking on Rebecca and SubStack. Pharmaceutical giants don’t set up $10 billion slush funds to cover lawsuit settlements if they know their products are effective and harmless. The paucity of reporting on this HIV-related story could tempt any truly independent investigative reporter to jump into covering it—it shouldn’t trigger an automatic reaction to avoid, censor, and conceal a $10 billion story.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.        Anna Merlan. “How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence of AIDS denialism.” MIT Technology Review, August 7, 2024. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/07/1095762/covid-conspiracies-hiv-aids-denial-public-health/
2.        Rebecca Culshaw. Science Sold Out. 2007. https://www.amazon.com/Science-Sold-Out-Really-Cause/dp/1556436424/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?crid=3IK3O4P8K1F5R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jQHIe1Zxl7--b858EdJ96lz62qNlmlsmWWo2QnVYqNf9ZpMD9OXeSN0BU2sAu9JO2YNQSXxcfy45Tyi11sX3JTm9JSfu6l8nX3Ws9itlpXw.UHL4F10EDGSAOOpPMC03E6_opbXiTD3LwT939_nu1ok&dib_tag=se&keywords=rebecca+culshaw+smith&qid=1723153307&sprefix=Rebecca+Culsh%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-2-fkmr0
3.        Rebecca V. Culshaw. The Real AIDS Epidemic: How the Tragic HIV Mistake Threatens Us All. 2023. Skyhorse Publishing/Simon & Schuster. https://www.amazon.com/Real-AIDS-Epidemic-Mistake-Threatens-ebook/dp/B0BQJW3NJY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?crid=3IK3O4P8K1F5R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jQHIe1Zxl7--b858EdJ96lz62qNlmlsmWWo2QnVYqNf9ZpMD9OXeSN0BU2sAu9JO2YNQSXxcfy45Tyi11sX3JTm9JSfu6l8nX3Ws9itlpXw.UHL4F10EDGSAOOpPMC03E6_opbXiTD3LwT939_nu1ok&dib_tag=se&keywords=rebecca+culshaw+smith&qid=1723153307&sprefix=Rebecca+Culsh%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1-fkmr0
4.        Rebecca Culshaw Smith. The Truvada and PrEP Disaster. July 2024. https://www.amazon.com/Truvada-Disaster-Rebecca-Culshaw-Smith-ebook/dp/B0D8CRLJPD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3IK3O4P8K1F5R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.a1-XWbEwsvn22xZNfmkIMg.uYu9liOeJhPHxfEadB_F_9uSKoY6uBm_M_hQbZSQVJY&dib_tag=se&keywords=rebecca+culshaw+smith&qid=1723154824&sprefix=Rebecca+Culsh%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1
5.        Mengmeng Lu et al.; “Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate induces pheochromocytoma cells apoptosis.” European Journal of Pharmacology, Volume 844, February 5, 2019, page 139.