The iconoclastic Harper’s article, entitled "Out of Control: Aids and the corruption of medical science", has sparked intense debate. Greeted by a chorus of condemnation and calls for the resignation of Harper’s editor, it has nevertheless found many defenders. It was written by Celia Farber, a journalist and long-standing critic of the science surrounding the HIV theory.

In an editorial, the Columbia Journalism Review accused the magazine of "racing right over a cliff" in publishing Farber. A blog called New Aids Review responded that the editorial was "a poor specimen of what journalism students are learning at one of the great universities", adding that the author would do better to write a thesis on "The Media in Aids: How Journalists Failed the American Public".

But even some long-standing HIV/Aids activists have admitted themselves shaken by the facts Farber set out about the lethal potential of some antiviral drugs; and the controversy has also taken the lid off a claim made repeatedly in response to attempts to reopen debate on the causes of Aids, that only a handful of scientists question the orthodox view.
Thanks to the internet, an association started 14 years ago to press for a scientific reappraisal of the HIV/Aids hypothesis now lists more than 2,300 public dissenters, including Nobel Laureates in chemistry and medicine on its website (http://rethinkaids.info/quotes/rethinkers.htm). Many have advanced degrees in the sciences and medicine as well as direct experience of working in the public health sector in Africa and other supposedly HIV-ravaged parts of the world.

One of these is Dr Rebecca Culshaw, assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Texas, a mathematical biologist who for 10 years studied and published models of HIV disease and treatment. In an internet posting entitled "Why I Quit HIV", Culshaw calls for a ban on HIV tests. She says they do "immeasurably more harm than good" because of an "astounding" lack of specificity and standardisation; she adds that many people are being treated with drugs on the basis of an insupportable theory. "My work … has been built in large part on the paradigm that HIV causes Aids and I have since come to realise that there is good evidence that the entire basis for this theory is wrong."

In Australia, the idea that anyone can be diagnosed as infected with HIV is to face a court challenge. In a hearing set down for July, the lawyer for a man found guilty of endangering the lives of three women through having unprotected sex (one woman has tested positive, while the other two are negative) is to call evidence from a Perth-based group of scientists who during nearly 25 years researching the scientific literature on Aids have come to an even more radical conclusion than the American dissenters quoted in Harper’s. The group (www.theperthgroup.com) will testify that "HIV" has never been isolated from the tissues of Aids patients; and that in consequence the HIV test has never been validated and there is no proof HIV is transmitted sexually.

Dr Robert Gallo, the American government researcher whose team developed and marketed the first test kits, says in a letter in this month’s Harper’s that "no test in medicine is perfect, but done correctly and with a confirmatory second test, the HIV blood test developed in our laboratory comes close." Gallo and others, including activists promoting anti-viral drugs in South Africa, make similar assertions in their rebuttal of Farber’s article stating that: "HIV tests were highly accurate from the time they were developed in 1984 and have become much more accurate over time as the underlying technology has evolved. HIV tests are amongst the most accurate available in medical science."