COMMENT: No one has been cured of HIV by TB Joshua

Recently you may have read the exciting news that a 2.5-year-old girl has been cured of HIV. What struck our attention when reading the articles was the fact that this girl is reported to be the second person in history to have been cured of HIV. Here is how some of the big news agencies are reporting it:

"Researchers say the only other documented case of an HIV cure is that of Timothy Brown, known as the “Berlin patient.” In 2007, Brown, an HIV-positive American living in Germany, was battling both leukemia and HIV when he underwent a bone marrow transplant that cured not only his cancer but his HIV." CNN

"Dr Persaud thinks her patient, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl whose identity is confidential, has joined Timothy Brown, a man known to many as the “Berlin patient”, as a human being who was once definitively infected with HIV and now no longer is." Economist

"The only fully cured AIDS patient recognized worldwide is the so-called “Berlin patient,” American Timothy Brown. He is considered cured of HIV and leukemia five years after receiving bone marrow transplants from a rare donor naturally resistant to HIV. The marrow transplant was aimed at treating his leukemia." Discovery

"In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown became the first person in the world believed to have recovered from HIV." BBC

What about all those supposedly healed of HIV at SCOAN? On their website currently they have 9 testimony videos of people claiming they were cured of HIV at SCOAN. Multiple identical news articles (usually proof that it is the work of SCOAN PR rather than genuine a journalistic piece) on African news sites state that “HUNDREDS of people from across Africa have said they were healed of HIV/AIDS after visiting Nigerian Prophet TB Joshua” (e.g. here, here and here).

Whatever the real number of people SCOAN claim have been healed, it is a lot more than what some of the biggest and most respected news agencies in the world are aware of.

What can we make of this discrepancy? Simple:

Nobody has ever been healed of HIV at SCOAN or by TB Joshua

How can we say this with such certainty? Consider the following: 1.Proving that someone once had HIV and no longer does is a fairly simple process. 2.“Hundreds” of people being healed of HIV is world-shaking, front page news. 3.If people really were being healed at SCOAN they would have flown in world-renowned experts in the virus to validate their claims instead of showing dubious ‘before and after’ medical certificates (who knows whether they are genuine or if the doctor signing them was bribed?).

HIV is an epidemic in Africa. False healing only spreads it faster and more widely. This must be stopped. If SCOAN are to continue claiming people are healed of HIV, they should open their doors to any researcher who wants to come and investigate and validate their claims, in fact they should actively encourage it and publish the findings in full. The fact that they have not done this is strong evidence that the claims would not stand up to this kind of scrutiny. For this reason we have no choice but to assume it is all a lie. It is too important an issue to sit on the fence.

If you are a supporter of SCOAN, you should encourage this call for transparent and independent research into their claims. If the claims are true, TB Joshua will become the most well known and celebrated minister on this planet and if the claims are not true, anyone involved in upholding them is contributing to the death and misery of many.