Anthony Brink
The focus on AIDS is in South Africa and Anthony knows more about this and the drugs used there than anybody else. ... What stands out about Anthony is that although he is not a scientist he has extensive scientific knowledge. ... [Drawing on] his training, intellect, interest, hard work and burning desire to help his people ... Anthony knows more about the science of this than all the other AIDS dissidents put together. – Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, leader of The Perth Group
Anthony Brink is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, former district and regional court prosecutor, and former criminal and civil magistrate of the district and regional courts.
In 2002, he founded the Treatment Information Group (TIG) to promote research-based public debate on antiretroviral (ARV) drug policy in South Africa.
Brink has researched and reviewed the clinical and molecular pharmacology literature on the ARV drugs AZT and nevirapine in depth since the mid-nineties, and has written extensively about them.
An early draft of his book Debating AZT (then subtitled Questions of safety and utility), sent to the Minister of Health in mid-1999, prompted President Mbeki to order an enquiry into the drug in Parliament on 28 October that year.
Brink's expertise as an autodidact in the pharmacology of AZT and nevirapine has been recognised by senior scientists worldwide:
Debating AZT: Mbeki and the AIDS drug controversy (Pietermaritzburg: Open Books, 2000) was described by Etienne de Harven MD, Emeritus Professor of Pathology, University of Toronto, Canada, as 'excellent ... the best, most comprehensive review on AZT currently available'. Harvey Bialy PhD, founding scientific editor of the leading, widely cited scientific journal Nature Biotechnology (formerly Bio/Technology), called it 'Absolutely spectacular ... superb ... the definitive refutation'. Peter Duesberg PhD, Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California at Berkeley and member of the National Academy of Sciences, described it as 'superb, extremely well researched, analyzed, written ... I could not have done a better job ... Are you a scientist or do you collaborate with one? How could you survey so many scientific publications as an attorney?' To an Indian journalist he remarked: 'I still can't believe he wrote that. He's really a molecular biologist pretending to be a lawyer.' All reviews
The foreword to Debating AZT was written by South Africa's leading investigative journalist, Martin Welz, editor and publisher of Noseweek. His English counterpart at Private Eye, Paul Foot, rated it equally highly: 'Very good, convinced me completely.' Former Daily Dispatch editor and Biko author Donald Woods too: 'Deserves serious treatment. More strength to your arm.'
After publishing Debating AZT, Brink performed an exhaustive review of the research literature on AZT's foetal and neonatal toxicity. Poisoning our Children: AZT in pregnancy comprises his several letters to the Medicines Control Council about this, concerning which Australian biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her colleagues in the Perth Group, themselves published experts on the pharmacology of AZT, remarked: 'Quite clearly your knowledge-base in this subject extends far beyond ours.'
The inventor of AZT, Richard Beltz PhD, Professor of Biochemistry at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, California, told Brink he was 'justified in sounding a warning against the long-term therapeutic use of AZT, or its use in pregnant women, because of its demonstrated toxicity and side effects. Unfortunately, the devastating effects of AZT emerged only after the final level of experiments was well underway ... Your effort is a worthy one. ... I hope you succeed in convincing your government not to make AZT available.'
After finding and reading the first half of Brink's book The trouble with nevirapine on the internet, Dr Jonathan Fishbein, formerly Director of the Office for Policy in Clinical Research Operations, Division of AIDS, US National Institutes of Health, wrote to praise it as 'an expertly written piece about this very dangerous drug'.
Fishbein is the top-ranking federal official who blew the whistle on the irredeemably corrupt manner in which the clinical trial HIVNET 012 was conducted in Uganda and how serious adverse events and mortality data were suppressed.
HIVNET 012 is the completely worthless study on the basis of which the Constitutional Court ordered the South African government to supply nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women and their newborn babies.
Fishbein subsequently furnished Brink with copies of crucial internal documents, equipping him to write the second half of The trouble with nevirapine, comprehensively blowing HIVNET 012 to pieces and indicting the Constitutional Court's egregious mishandling of the nevirapine case in blithely disregarding all the fatal new information about the drug that Brink had brought to its attention by way of an urgent amicus curiae application, even as the Chief Justice himself commended Brink's 'compelling argument' from the bench.
Robert Kennedy Jnr cited The trouble with nevirapine eight times as his source for the nevirapine chapter of his 2001 bestseller, The Real Anthony Fauci (over 1.4 million print, ebook, and audiobook copies sold, as at August 2026), and he quoted from many of the smoking-gun documents that Fishbein had leaked to Brink, canvassed in Brink's book.
Professor Andrew Herxheimer MB, FRCP, Emeritus Fellow of the UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford, described The trouble with nevirapine as 'an amazing job ... brilliantly dissects an avoidable tragedy: how misconceptions and misunderstandings about a new medicine ... caused a pointless, costly and toxic mess that still needs clearing up. An important story with lessons for all of us ... and readable with it.'
In recognition of his expertise as a self-trained expert in the toxic pharmacology of ARVs, Brink was honoured with a co-authorship credit of a major scientific monograph published by Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al. in November 2001: Mother to Child Transmission of HIV and its Prevention with AZT and Nevirapine: A Critical Analysis of the Evidence.
Brink has lectured at the Medical University of Southern Africa (as it was then called) in Limpopo, at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, and at dozens of meetings in cities all over Europe, as well as in Ekaterinberg, where he arranged all foreign speakers for a multi-national, multi-lingual conference called by the All-Russia Parents Convention. He also convened and addressed a conference he chaired in Paris, attended by concerned persons from all over Europe and the UK.
Brink's books can be freely accessed in PDF for non-commercial use at Open books and at many other websites worldwide.
His work has been translated into Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.
Anticipating a career in law, Brink took Latin instead of biology at high school, but was tutored extramurally by his grandfather in microbiology, microtechnique and photomicrography to an advanced level. He taught himself chemistry, culminating in adventures with home-made high explosives, and is also self-taught in audio electronics, enabling him to construct his own sound equipment for his several musical projects over the years.
Brink is a music enthusiast who co-founded a jazz club in the late eighties featuring performances by many of South Africa's leading jazz musicians, built and operated a recording studio, built and operated a concert sound rig and engineered club and concert hall sound, managed a professional African pop group, played in a jazz band, and wrote jazz concert reviews for the Witness newspaper. World Cinema is a favourite distraction.