Letter to Essence Magazine Regarding Coverage of the ICC Orphanage Forced Treatment Scandal

February 2007
Lynn Gannett

Dear Editor,

Thank your for having the courage to publish your outstanding article about the scandalous experiments on helpless black and Latino foster children in New York City, and the forced removal of children from parents who rightfully choose to discontinue “medicines” which are clearly making their child seriously ill [“The New York City AIDS Experiment,” February 2007]. By choosing to cover this heart-wrenching story, you open your publication up to the kinds of criticism and demands for censorship which have just recently been directed at the BBC, producers of the 2004 documentary – “Guinea Pig Kids” – referenced in your article.¹

I look forward to the day when Essence magazine and other black publications help to expose the underlying fallacy which enables such hideous experiments to take place – namely, the myth that a sexually-transmitted virus, so-called HIV, is the cause of AIDS. This myth could only have gained widespread acceptance in a world where deeply-entrenched, racist, negative stereotypes about black people predominate – insulting stereotypes which portray blacks as carriers of disease, a race whose members are characterized by unrestrained promiscuity, and whose men are more prone to rape than their Caucasian counterparts.²

Not only is the myth of infectious AIDS founded on racist stereotypes which have existed for centuries, the picture painted of an unstoppable epidemic of AIDS sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa helps to further perpetuate these offensive stereotypes about black people.

Tragically, rather than rebel against this dehumanizing portrayal, black people–both in affluent countries and in poor countries–have unknowingly internalized the racist self-image handed down by their oppressors, and have joined the campaign for increased testing and “access” to the poisonous “anti-retrovirals,” thereby hastening their own demise.

The good news is that some black leaders in Africa – most notably the visionary South African President Thabo Mbeki – have begun to stand up against the Western pharmaceutical industry and their billion-dollar anti-retroviral market; to correctly identify extreme poverty as the primary underlying cause of widespread immune deficiency; and to insist on natural, non-toxic, African solutions to alleviate the suffering of their people.

Respectfully,

Lynn Gannett
Syracuse, NY

References

Copyright © Lynn Gannett & Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society, Monday, March 5, 2007.