persecuted physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Regarding this comparison, Goertzel stated: Duesberg's advocacy of AIDS denialism has, by all accounts, effectively made him a pariah to the worldwide scientific community. Consequences of AIDS denialism In 2000, Duesberg was the most prominent AIDS denialist to sit on a 44-member Presidential Advisory Panel on HIV and AIDS convened by then-president Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. The panel was scheduled to meet concurrently with the 2000 International AIDS Conference in Durban and to convey the impression that Mbeki's doubts about HIV/AIDS science were valid and actively discussed in the scientific community. The views of the denialists on the panel, aired during the AIDS conference, received renewed attention. Mbeki later suffered substantial political fallout for his support for AIDS denialism and for opposing the treatment of pregnant HIV-positive South African women with antiretroviral medication. Mbeki partly attenuated his ties with denialists in 2002, asking them to stop associating their names with his. In response to the inclusion of AIDS denialists on Mbeki's panel, the Durban Declaration was drafted and signed by over 5,000 scientists and physicians, describing the evidence that HIV causes AIDS as "clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous". Two independent studies have concluded that the public health policies of Thabo Mbeki's government, shaped in part by Duesberg's writings and advice, were responsible for over 330,000 excess AIDS deaths and many preventable infections, including those of infants. A 2008 feature story on Duesberg in Discover addresses Duesberg's role in anti-HIV drug-preventable deaths in South Africa. Jeanne Lenzer interviews prominent HIV/AIDS expert Max Essex, who suggests that, Academic misconduct investigation In 2009, Duesberg and co-authors including David Rasnick published an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses, which is not peer reviewed. The article, HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective, had been rejected previously by the journal JAIDS, and a peer reviewer had warned that the authors could face scientific misconduct charges if the paper were published. The reviewers claimed that Duesberg and his co-authors cherry-picked data, cited favorable results while ignoring unfavorable results, and quoted statements out of context. The article was not revised in response to these criticisms. Moreover, the reviewers claim that Duesberg, though he included in the article that neither he nor his co-authors had financial conflicts of interest, "[committed] a serious breach of professional ethics" by failing to state a possible conflict of interest: That