ladies and gentlemen I'm sorry to introduct interrupt your breakfast but this is a working meeting the Faculty of the schools of mathematics and Natural Sciences thought you should hear about some of the fascinating work going on in other schools at the Institute so this morning we're privileged to have Didier Vassar who is the James D Wolfensohn professor in our School of Social Science talk to us about conspiracy theories in medicine Didier's research is focused at the intersection of the theoretical metallographic foundations of anthropology originally trained as a physician he's conducted field studies in Senegal Ecuador
South Africa and France that have led to perspectives that have illuminated important aspects of maternal health social disparities in health and the AIDS epidemic Didier took his doctorate in medicine in 1982 his master's degree in public health in 1980 1986 and his PhD in social science in 1988 all in Paris before joining the Faculty of the Institute last year Didier wealth amongst other things professor of sociology at the University of Paris north and from 2007 he was the founding director of iris the inter - in - interdisciplinary research institute on social issues in Paris amongst
many other responsibilities Didier was vice president of the French National Committee on AIDS from 2004 to 2006 and vice president of Medicine Seong frontiere from 1999 to 2003 thank you Peter it is a pleasure and an honor to have been invited by my colleagues from the school of mathematics and school of Natural Science to represent so to speak the to other schools historical studies and social science in this event as soon as I had accepted their invitation however I started to wonder what could be the subject of my talk I was actually caught between two
concerns I wanted to arouse the interest of hard scientists as opposed to the soft scientists we are supposed to be or should I say in humanities as opposed to as opposed to humanities to quote a French friend astrophysicist was also the national director of research in France and I hoped I could avoid breakfast in digestion for the rest of the audience I ended decided in favor of the first option hoping that the evocation of conspiracy theories which posed interesting anthropological and epistemological questions would not be too heavy on your stomach this early in the morning
on the 15th of September 2000 the ED line of the South African weekly mail and Guardian ran AIDS tragedy turns to fur to fuss the paper was referring to an odd episode that had taken place a few days before on a renown radio talk show as he was interviewing the Minister of Health man takabbara MC Mong star journalist John Robie had mentioned a book that he was said to have distributed among the provincial health minister during national meeting on the epidemic published in 1991 behold a pale horse is a best-seller in the United States by
Milton William Cooper the former US Navy intelligence service agent who revealed supposed plots that involved the Freemasons the Illuminati and space aliens and included the assassination of John Farrell Kennedy suppose supposedly organized by secret societies and the preparation of mass killings carried out via the control of people's mind by Prozac one of the conspiracies in his book concerned quote the extermination of undesirable elements of society specifically the black Hispanic and more sexual populations and quote through the dissemination of HIV using the smallpox vaccine in Africa during the 1970s that a high high-level government official could
be receptive to this sort of literature and attempt to proselytize her colleagues at the moment when she was supposed to develop program to out the progression of the disease was certainly shocking to many the country had recently discovered the gravity of the epidemic with one fifth of its adult population infected and an estimated decrease in life expectancy by twenty years within the next two decades and the president double micki has had recently provoked indignation around the world by giving credit to intelidox thisis inspired by berkeley dissident scientists Peter Duesberg which asserted that poverty rather than
a virus was the cause of the African AIDS and that antiretroviral drugs were killing people instead of healing them as part of a possible plot against African populations Monto chavalla lambs among affinities not only with the attack science but also with conspiracy theories where the straw that broke the camel's back the revelation of these affinities infuriated some and amused others the minister became simultaneously the most hated politician and the laughingstock of the South African white liberal elite the weekly mail and Guardian in reference to Alan Bennett's play about King George third reported on quote the
man in the madness of Queen monto however the issue was broader as large segments of the black population of the townships and former homeland as well as of the educated middle class were sensitive if not to the UFO plot at least to the idea that a hidden truth about the epidemic existed the eighth tragedy was turning less to a farce than to drama conspiracy theories have a long history but they still belong to our present contrarily to what positivism would predict the increasing authority of science over our knowledge has not dispelled if the series just
as the expanding Empire of rationality on our minds as not disenchanted our world and eliminated religion beliefs in improbable plots are permanently reinvented we all remember that Princess Diana's death in a car accident in Paris has been attributed to the British Secret Service acting to prevent her engagement to Egyptian millionaire Dodi Fayed and that the 9/11 attacks were alternatively blamed on the US military industrial complex attempt to impose a military regime in the United States and on the US allegation and the US intelligence services need to justify wars against Iraq and Afghanistan these allegations often
find surprising echoes in the media and public opinion but also sometimes among intellectuals and politicians of course they also provoke antagonize reactions which are usually of two kinds as we've seen indignation or mockery typically conspiratorial statements are object of either scandal or sarcasm in the case of studying in South Africa in the early 2000s the madness of Queen Montreux and the so called folly of king table aroused both anger and derision among activists physicians and scientists contrary to these common attitudes I take these heterodoxy seriously not that I credit them with a scientific of factual
truth but because they denote a distinct historical and political truth actually I even made them the center of my research on AIDS in South Africa to dismiss these conspiratorial narratives as criminal or ridiculous as the product of cynical Minds trying to seduce their constituency or as the result of the pathological symptoms of deranged decision-makers cannot account for the broad audience these theories have especially among black South African of all the historical resonance they imply in the country of apartheid in fact this may not be even uniquely South African story a 2005 survey conducted by African
among African Americans by the RAND Corporation Oregon State University indicated that nearly half believed HIV was man-made one fourth thought it had been produced in a government laboratory and when a considered that the CIA was involved 15 percent of them in the United States viewed AIDS as a form of genocide against black people the strangeness of secret society and space aliens or of mysterious plots and complicated conferences should certainly arouse more than condescending smiles or exasperated reactions the need for anthropological inquiry on these issues does not emanate from the apparent exoticism of these beliefs which
be known which in fact belong not to remote societies but also to our world we live in an age of anxiety to quote Odin in which conspiracy theories are widely distributed especially and socially involving all sorts of individuals from mbuna and energy to Daniel part pipes from Louis Farrakhan to Glenn Beck crystallizing on all kinds of subjects from the birth certificate of a president to the building of a mosque from Islam to the Jews and sometimes provoking uncontrollable reactions of violence or fear trying to make sense of what seems irrational and attempting to render the
intelligibility of what appears at first sight to be in comprehensible represents therefore a crucial contribution of anthropology to our understanding of social worlds but anthropologist of course do not have the monopoly hiren and political scientist Richard of stutter wrote a famous piece in Oprah's magazine in 1964 entitled the paranoid style in American politics in which he analyzed the genealogy of McCarthyism in the United States and dissidents of targets of accusations are not lacking from Illuminism and masonry in masonry in in the 18th century to the Jesuits and Catholic in the 19th century to the Communists
and the establishment in the 20th century the adjective used by this author paranoid is interesting if from a psychiatric perspective paranoia can be diagnosed in a patient as the combination of persecution the idea of being the victim of a plot and megalomania the sense of one's greatness the two features coalesce in these in all these conspiracy theories those who denounce them think there exists an invisible threat which endangers the collectivity or even the world and they are the chosen ones who must unveil the concealed reality by drawing this parallel between the psychic and the social
and not however suggesting a pathological model of society but rather a structural analogy which may help us capture why certain conspiratorial configurations in the public fear fight find potential echoes in the psychological functioning of apparently mentally sane individuals in some why some people sometimes believe in apparently unbelievable plots of all conspiracy theories which can be political religious military etc one category is of special interest and concern the scientific theories or maybe even more specifically the biomedical ones by which I mean those both biological and medical they are of special interest and concern not only because
we are gathered here to celebrate the 80th anniversary of scientific institution where these disciplines are represented and because I am speaking to mathematicians physicists and biologists but because they address a specific truth that of science and a specific ethics that of medicine to believe as some do that science can be used for occult malevolent purposes and that medicine can fail its core principle of primum non nocere touches the very heart of truth and ethics they engage the idea of a cognitive deviance in science and of a moral perversion in medicine but because the power exerted
by science and medicine over bodies and lives these conspiracy theories often assume a particularly tragic form with the specter of the eradication of whole populations as we all pandemic Panama disease from 14th century plague to 19th century cholera AIDS has provoked an epidemic of conspiracy theories not all of them are related to science and medicine for instance according to the scenario of the so called AIDS Club narrative which can be found in Indonesia Egypt Sweden Canada and the United States a person gets infected often through needle puncture or sexual relations by an individual which is
appears leaving the message welcome to the AIDS Club most of the time however the plots directly involved scientists and physicians they may be local or global local theories correspond to specific situation for instance Libyan authorities as you may remember accused Bulgarian nurses and physicians to have voluntarily infected newborns in a hospital where they worked as expatriates global theories involve a broader frame for example after a biologist from Berlin invoked an experiment conducted at the military base of Fort Detrick Maryland and involving the injection of manmade virus to prison inmates the accidental or intentional dissemination of
the disease via vaccines became a late motive of most plots the idea ideological background of the most prevalent aids conspiracy theories involves planning the planning of the genocide of black or african population it has been mobilized in different ways accusation of infecting populations of denying them treatment of using them as guinea pigs of deliberately giving them toxic drugs these accusation reverberate within the concern population from eighty to Kenya from African Americans in the United States to Africans in South Africa where the theme of extermination has begun part of the common discourse how can we account
for these conspiracy theories about science and medicine that is not so much for their emergence as for their success why do so many people including sometimes intellectuals and politicians even scientists and physicians adhere to paranoid worldviews which would normally be considered inconsistent and implausible not to say absurd the interpretations usually given fall into three main categories psychological cultural and political I do not know of any neuroscience of conspiracy yet but I'm willing to take the bet that we will soon a functional brain imaging to localize the anatomical area where plots are conceived or adopted and
in fact I recently read a call for such a neuroscience of conspiracy theory on a blog entitled advance studies but let us focus on more established interpretations psychological explanations refer either to individual characteristics such as paranoiac personality or most interestingly to universal features like projective mechanism of one's personal hostility in some cases or here in others nevertheless these interpretations either fall short since even if we admit the insanity of a few promoters of imaginary of plot imaginaries they do not explain why large segments of the population adhere to the same theories or there seemed almost
truisms since they almost paraphrase the definition of conspiratorial beliefs which are of a projective nature they can predict that individuals who experience the mental distortion of reality may extend them to their representations of the world like british former journalist david icke known for his affirmation that reptilian humanoids are governing the world or that many under a totalitarian regime may may view the world with austerity and fear as it was the case in the soviet union or is still the case in iran but there are less useful to understand more ordinary situations cultural cultural explanation propose
more sophisticated perspectives they discuss the saturation of our public sphere sphere with an very variable or at least unverified information in a context where there is simultaneously a permanent call for transparency in communication and an obvious opacity of certain institution including government the army and sometimes even science and medicine the official statement by the French authorities that the Chernobyl nuclear nuclear cloud at MiraCosta stopped at the border of the country and therefore had no health consequences did not facilitate the building of trust in government and probably science just as the reluctance of US military to
investigate the goal the Gulf War Syndrome did little to contribute to confidence in the army and medicine these interpretations cultural ones certainly set a context but they do not account for the fact that some people are more prone than others to become involved in conspiracy theories political expeditions are probably more relevant here they suggest that historically dominated or discriminated groups that is people who subjectively consider that they have been or are still dominated or discriminated are particularly prone to these conspiracy theories when cholera started to spread in Venezuela anak water several years ago as I
was working there the Indian populations believed that it was part of a government plot and and fled when medical teams arrived in the country in their villages exhume this narrative of the vanquished in German historian Reiner Co selects word may reveal important historical but also epistemological truth until now I have implicitly considered as an ice of conspiracy theories usually do that these theories were imaginary thus we could draw a clear line between evidence-based and purely invented facts between truth and error we share at least suppose the vast majority of us the idea that those who
believe that HIV was accidentally or intentionally disseminated or that AIDS was part of a plot to sermonette black population are wrong even if we try to find explanations or sometimes even justification regarding these makan misconception or delusions but are we so sure that the limit can be so easily determined accidental side effects abound in African public health the most documented including by recent genetic studies being the dramatic spread of hepatitis C as a result of mass campaigns of immunization in the colony in Cameroon and of treatment by against schistosomiasis after the 1960s in Egypt intentional
malevolent actions appear to be much more rare but the most study is as you know the infamous Tuskegee Experiment in the United States which consisted of studying the natural evolution of syphilis among 400 African Americans from 1932 to 1972 denying them access to penicillin considering the publicity generated by these stories it should be no surprised surprised that the polio vaccine hypothesis to explain the origin of AIDS initially proposed in The Lancet at such a long life in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary and that religious leaders in northern Nigeria may have spoken against polio
vaccine polio vaccination that they found suspect of being mixed with sterilizing drugs thus contributing to an epidemic of polio in the following years the South African history dwells even deeper in this uncomfortable truth both science and medicine have been used there during almost a century to justify an implement domination over black South Africans and the history of public health is closely related to the experience of racial oppression the first measures of spatial segregation were taken during the 1900 block a polemic in Cape Town supposedly to protect the white population despite the fact that African town
dwellers were less infected the same cynical use of disease for stigmatization and discrimination of African populations was later displayed with the Asian flu tuberculosis syphilis and more dramatically AIDS during the final years of apartheid that is in 1990s conservative and national parties representatives publicly rejoiced about its but the potential consequences of AIDS for the African population aids will succeed where our policies have failed some stated that is in turning black people into a minority but in fact extermination was not just a chimerical delirium of few far-right Afrikaners it also became the goal of a secret
operation named project coast according to the last earings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1998 it gave rise to the opening of a new file for the six hundred and sixty eight pages of the chemical and biological warfare hearings a physician voter base on communities ignited as dr. death had developed with his colleagues a series of experiments with cholera and anthrax use against NC leaders along with the contrast contraceptive supposedly aimed at the black population as part of an extermination program more specifically revelation that hiv-positive soldiers had been used to infect African prostitutes with
the hope that it would in turn disseminate the disease in the townships elevated conspiratorial fears to a peak that neither project was carried carried out as be clear on that failed to prevent representations and discourses from being contaminated by these genocidal ideas which nourished the news as well as everyday discussions since voter bassoons trial ended in 2004 six years later at which time he was triumphantly acquitted by a judge known to be an apartheid nostalgic and continued to practice medicine since he had never been banned the National Medical Association the fact that which confirmed for
many the existence of a persistent conspiracy when I was conducting my fieldwork in Soweto I often heard black Africans commenting on this story and more generally on plots to exterminate them or simply as many were sick and had been denied treatment by their government to let them die as they would say certainly the South African historical configuration is more exceptional than exemplary however it suggests that an inquiry into conspiracy theories can open unexpected black boxes that of the embodiment of memory in particular as a possible key of interpretation but also that it may put to
the test some of our epistemological certainties while avoiding as I try to do the pitfalls of the endless discussion between relativism and positivism some truth our scientific others are historical our didier will be around the rest of the morning and welcome discussion of this talk now the next talk is that 9:30 in the Wolfensohn hall stanley blur and i look forward to seeing you there thank you
