April 06 2001 at 05:41PM

A United States-based "Aids dissident" appointed by South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday that Africans were not dying from Aids but from illnesses that have gripped the continent for centuries.

"Africans are suffering and dying from the same things they have been suffering and dying from for generations before Aids. They are not suffering and dying from something new called Aids," leading scientist David Rasnick was quoted as saying by the South African Press Association (Sapa).

Mbeki appointed Rasnick to a presidential advisory panel on HIV and Aids last year and his comments were expected to generate further concern over the country's approach to Aids.

Mbeki has attracted international condemnation for questioning the causal link between HIV and Aids, denying the use of antiretroviral drugs in the public health system on cost and safety grounds, and by appointing roughly a dozen dissidents to his 33-member panel.

Rasnick said Aids was neither contagious, sexually transmitted or caused by HIV and that anti-Aids drugs accelerated death or made people sick with Aids.

Rasnick has described the virus as "harmless" and in his submissions to the panel argued that South Africans were now being ruled by the "tyranny" of orthodox science in the same way as the country's white minority leaders under apartheid.

Rasnick was speaking two days after the release of an interim report by Mbeki's panel, which failed to reach a conclusion on what caused Aids and how to combat the epidemic.

The United Nations estimates that 2,4 million people died of Aids in Africa last year and that 25,3 million people are living with the disease in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

UnAids has described the Aids situation in Africa as "catastrophic". South Africa's own health department, which acts on the premise that HIV causes Aids, estimates that 4,7 million South Africans are living with the disease, more than any other country in the world.

Orthodox science has said that the link between HIV and Aids is proven beyond doubt and have urged South Africa to drop the panel and its debate and instead concentrate on tackling the disease.

South Africa's approach to Aids has also been marred by a row with leading drug firms over the cost of anti-retroviral drugs that could help prolong the lives of people with the disease.

Dissidents such as Rasnick argue that Aids is caused by a breakdown of the human immune system brought on by the use of recreational drugs, anti-Aids drugs or poverty.

Reuters