Controversial AIDS panel meets

A controversial AIDS Advisory Panel set up by President Thabo Mbeki met at the weekend to resolve the issue of whether HIV causes AIDS. The panel, which includes AIDS sceptics, agreed at its inaugural meeting to set up a set of experiments to answer Mbeki’s concerns over whether the HIV virus is linked to AIDS, ‘The Star’ newspaper reported. “There are a possible series of experiments that can be done, that ought not to be too costly, that ought not to take a long time, which may deal with the etiology of AIDS - what causes AIDS,” Khotso Mokhele, head of the SA National Research Foundation, told reporters.