The
Durban Declaration is a statement signed by over 5,000 physicians and scientists in the year 2000, affirming that
HIV is the cause of
AIDS. The declaration was drafted in response to
AIDS denialism, and particularly to address
South African president
Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS denialists. It was written several weeks prior to the 2000
International AIDS Conference, held in
Durban, South Africa from July 9-14, 2000, and was published in the
medical journal Nature to coincide with the Durban conference. The declaration called the evidence that HIV causes AIDS "clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous".
Each person who signed the document was required to have a
Ph.D. or
M.D.-equivalent degree. To avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, scientists "working for commercial companies were asked not to sign." The signatories included eleven
Nobel prize winners.
Michael Specter, writing in the
New Yorker, called the Durban Declaration "one of the saddest documents in modern scientific history," reflecting concern that Mbeki's embrace of AIDS denialism was a disastrous response to
South Africa's AIDS epidemic. and initially dismissed the Durban declaration. Health...
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