Serena's comment to Oregon Post's Review of Brent Leung's House of Numbers

Read review and comments to this brave documentary about the importance of dissidence in the production of scientific knowledge

http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/01/review_house_of_numbers_blurs/2835/comments-newest.html

Posted by Serena
 

March 14, 2010, 10:33PM

Brent's work is very important as it alerts an entire new generation to the scientific problems research on AIDS has not resolved yet, with the first voice admitting this the French scientist who discovered HIV back in the 1980s, Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier. I am a university professor and educator and I have researched and written extensively about the AIDS controversies, analyzing the cultural/political context in which official AIDS science was produced, and the likely effects that this context had on the results. Science happens in culture and is affected by it, it is not neutral or universal, never has been, if we think of how hard it was for Galileo to affirm something simple like the concept that the Earth moves back then when the powers that be had an investment in the opposite theory. The problem with AIDS science is that people get upset about it because it affects them intimately, having to do with what they do, or think they can do, in bed. What about separating the two problems? Asking the government to mandate that scientists officially run again the laboratory experiments said to prove that HIV causes AIDS, and in the meanwhile continuing to use condoms when doing something that would otherwise result in the exchange of deep fluids when unknown risk factors are involved? This is what I propose in my latest book, Gaia and the New Politics of Love (2009). See also my blog, http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

I plan to organize a screening of Leung's documentary on my campus, so students learn more about the importance of maintaining the space open for free speech and knowledge that represents dissenting viewpoints.

With much respect and admiration for Leung's brave work. 

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet (2009)
and of Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves (2007)