Celia "Career Denialist" Farber

Celia Farber claims to be an investigative *ahem* journalist. Really she is nothing more than a person who gets paid for spreading HIV denialist propaganda. Every cause has their mouthpiece. Celia Farber is an expert. Not in HIV or AIDS. No Celia is an expert in very publicly stitching herself up! The following extracts from an interview are taken from bookslut all comments in bold are my own observations:

BS:You are constantly described as an AIDS dissident that does not believe HIV causes AIDS -- but nowhere in your book is this explicitly stated. So how would you describe your views?

CF: Thank you for noticing that critical detail. I have never written that HIV does not cause AIDS. I don’t think I’ve ever said that HIV does not cause AIDS. I took one semester of journalism in college. Thanks Celia. Good to see that you spent a hell of a lot of time earning the title of journalist!!!

CF: It is not for me to say as a journalist -- as a nonscientist -- what causes or doesn’t cause AIDS. Great Celia. You are off to a blinding start. Not only do you admit to having no substantial education as a journalist but you make it perfectly clear that you are not a scientist...

BS:Do you wish you had taken a different approach reporting? Is there anything you would have done differently?

CF:My quick answer is usually yes, of course. But it’s unanswerable… What I wish I had done differently, in retrospect, was to calculate the damage and the blight, both on myself and on my family and ask myself, “Is it fair to do to others?” Because what you actually do is you invite financial ruin. The damage and the blight Celia? Oh poor you and your poor family! How many of your denialist chums have died? How many people who have listened to your warped rhetoric are now dead because they did not access the treatments that could have prolonged their life? That is the damage and that is the blight Celia. NOT the fact that you did not earn more money. But I think that is more to do with just the one semester at journalist school than anything else...

BS:As a non-gay male AIDS reporter and Westerner investigating Africa, did you have to deal with identity politics?

CF: I never got that kind of guff from any Africans, [but] certainly from the gay community. Those that were opposed to what I was doing -- that was one of the charges: that I wasn’t gay and how the hell could I know what I was doing and what right did I have to say anything? But that’s inconsistent with the core belief system, which is that AIDS is everybody’s disease... Yes darling but you started spouting your denialist crap in 1988. Do you also have selective amnesia? Of course the Gay community were going to take exception to your denialist crap because Gay men were bearing the brunt of the numbers of deaths and the social stigma. The last thing they would have wanted when they were dying would be for someone like you to add more bulshit to the fire...

I would go to AIDS conferences and go through an immense crisis each time, “Am I crazy or are they crazy?” Answers on a postcard...

BS: Do you think The Constant Gardner was able to voice political dissent as it is shielded as fiction?

CF:I would caution people against assuming that John le Carre is writing fiction. Let me make a generality: fiction writers today like John le Carre are doing journalism, and the journalists are writing fiction. Thanks again Celia.... i didn't need to read this interview with you to know that you talk a pile of stinking shit! But thanks for the clarification!

I do wish that I could crawl away, quietly and turn up on some completely other part of the beach. So do we Celia, so do we... and take your denialist chums with you...

Celia worked as a researcher on the BBC documentry "Guinea Pig Kids" This is what the BBC had to say about the programme in question:

ECU ruling: Guinea Pig Kids, BBC2, 30 November 2004 and related websites
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/news/2007/11/30/51154.shtml