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Joan Shenton
Born
Joan Alicia Shenton

(1943-03-16) 16 March 1943 (age 81)
Antofagasta, Chile
NationalityBritish
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • writer
  • documentary filmmaker
  • TV personality
WebsiteImmunity Resource Foundation

Joan Alicia Shenton (born 16 March 1943) is a British-Chilean broadcaster who has produced and presented programmes for radio and television.

Shenton is known as an exponent of the ideas of AIDS denial.[1]

Early life

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Shenton was born in Antofagasta, Chile to an English father and Anglo-Chilean mother. She lived in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala and Venezuela. When she was 11 she came to England to attend St Catherine's School, Bramley, Surrey.[citation needed]

In 1961, she matriculated as a state scholar at St Anne's College, Oxford, reading Spanish and French. She ultimately gained an MA (Hons) in Modern Languages.[citation needed]

Early career

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In 1964, she joined the BBC World Service, broadcasting in Spanish for the Latin American Service. She reported on London stories for presenter Juan Peirano on Actualidades and Ritmo de Londres.

She then reported in Spanish for the Central Office of Information (COI) on a weekly television programme called This Week in Britain (TWIBS) which was given to British Embassies in Latin America and provided free to the respective countries' television stations.

She became a reporter/presenter for Anglia Television and then BBC's Nationwide,[2] where she worked for Michael Townson, editor of London region.

In 1972, she became seriously ill with drug-induced lupus after excessive medication in Spain. This led to her lifelong interest in injury from prescribed drugs.[3] Together with Lilian Wilding and through the Thames Television Help! programme, Shenton later founded the Steroid Aid Group in 1979 and became honorary president.

After her recovery, she joined Thames Television in 1973 as co-presenter with Tony Bastable on the consumer programme Money-Go-Round,[4] produced by Mary McAnally. During this period, she also presented Thames Television's social affairs programme Help!

Shenton resumed her radio career in 1973, joining Capital Radio under the editorship of Michael Bukht (also known as the chef Michael Barry). She broadcast for Capital from the station's very first day on air, and co-presented a daily three-hour live programme Swap Shop with Tommy Vance.[5] She then went on to present Capital's weekly hospital radio programme called Person to Person.

Independent producer

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In 1978, together with Ronnie Noble, Shenton founded her independent production company Meditel Productions and made its first series of programmes about joint replacement surgery together with surgeon Michael Freeman.

She produced and presented for the BBC's Tonight the first live broadcast of a total hip replacement operation relayed from the then London Hospital, Whitechapel to a conference of surgeons in Bern, Switzerland. The programme was relayed by the European Broadcasting Union. In 1980, Meditel made Microsurgeons of Shanghai about Chen Zhong Wei's work on limb and finger replantation (TV Eye, Thames TV).

Around the time Channel 4 was founded, Shenton and business partner Alison Hawkes turned Meditel Productions into a limited company and secured one of Channel 4's first factual programmes commissions. They made Kill or Cure?, two series of programmes on injury from prescribed drugs,[6] together with pharmacologist Dr Andrew Herxheimer. These programmes were used by University College London Medical School to train students of pharmacology.[citation needed]

Other programmes in this period include Who Cares? (Channel 4), a four-part series on comparative healthcare around the world. One of the programmes, Keeping the Beat, which challenged currently held views on fat and cholesterol won the Medical Journalists Association and Pearl Assurance Special Merit Award (1986).[citation needed]

Central Television's Viewpoint series commissioned an international look at approaches to mental illness, Forgotten Millions (1987), which Shenton co-produced with David Cohen.[7] It won the Red Ribbon Award: American Film and Video Association (1989).

A one-hour documentary, Impotence – One in Ten Men, for Channel 4[8] won the British Medical Association Educational Merit Award (1990).[citation needed]

In the late 1980s, together with Meditel's producer Jad Adams, Meditel made two network six-part series about food, Food – Fad or Fact?,[9] co-produced with Tom Goodison of Television South West. Food – Fad or Fact? "Salt" won the New Jersey Television and Movie Awards (1988). "The Cholesterol Campaign" won at the Houston International Film Festival: Bronze Award, Educational Documentaries (1989).[citation needed]

AIDS dissident

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Shenton has made a number of documentary films erroneously claiming that AIDS is not caused by HIV. It is established scientific fact that untreated HIV is the precursor to AIDS.[10][11]

A programme for Channel 4's Dispatches series (AIDS: The Unheard Voices), produced by Jad Adams, was the first of four Meditel commissions on the subject.[12] It won the Royal Television Society Journalism Award (1988) and Meditel was the first independent production company ever to win this award. There followed The AIDS Catch (Dispatches, 1990),[13] then AZT – Cause for Concern (Dispatches, 1991)[14] which was awarded the British Medical Association Educational Merit Award (1992).[citation needed] AIDS and Africa (Dispatches, 1993)[15] travelled across Africa and challenged the reported figures for AIDS at the time.

During this period, Meditel made a series of reports on the AIDS debate which were shown on Sky News: Amsterdam Alternative AIDS Conference (1992) featuring AIDS denialist, molecular biologist Peter Duesberg;[16] AZT Babies (1992); AIDS Dissidents in Europe (1993).[17] In late 1993 a one-hour documentary called Diary of an AIDS Dissident was transmitted on Sky News.[18]

In 2000, Shenton and Huw Christie, editor of Continuum magazine, made Search for Solutions: The Great AIDS Debate for M-Net's Carte Blanche programme in South Africa. It included a specially granted interview with President Thabo Mbeki.[19]

In 2010, Shenton was part of the Alternative AIDS Conference in Vienna[20] and was amongst a number of denialists interviewed by Russia Today.[21]

The following year, the independent film Positively False: Birth of a Heresy, co-produced with Andi Reiss, was released by Meditel and Yellow Productions. The film brought together highlights from over 60 hours of footage from the Meditel archive, challenging the link between HIV and AIDS.[22] It was nominated for Best Documentary at the Lucerne (2011) and Marbella (2012) International Film Festivals.[23][24]

In 2014, Shenton and Reiss made a 30-minute documentary, Positive Hell, which followed the lives of five individuals in Northern Spain who survived a diagnosis of HIV while shunning medication for decades.[25] Positive Hell was also nominated for Best Documentary at Marbella International Film Festival (2014)[26] and was selected for the online festivals LACineFest (2015), Digital Griffix, Montreal (2015)[27][28] and the Indie Festival, Switzerland (2015). Following selection and subsequent banning from London Independent Film Festival, Portobello Film Festival and Bluestockings (New York) in 2016,[citation needed] the film won the Special Jury Prize for World Social Impact at the 2017 Queens World Film Festival.[citation needed] It was also screened at the National Action Network in Harlem and Parents in Action Centre, Jackson Heights.[citation needed]

Shenton is a board member of Rethinking AIDS.[29]

Other activities

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Shenton lived for several years in the Dominican Republic where she founded a charity with lawyer and charity administrator Dra Susana Vargas in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. The charity, Fundacion Daniel Martinez, promotes sports education and cultural programmes teaching folkloric music and dance. The charity has constructed extra schoolroom wings in five rural schools, a polyclinic and a rehabilitation centre in Puerto Plata hospital.[citation needed]

In 1999, Shenton produced the Home Running documentary in the Dominican Republic for BBC Under the Sun, directed by Kim Flitcroft, about young Dominican baseball players who make it into the US Major League Academies.[30]

Shenton sings with Latin American folk band Altamar which has performed on Capital Radio, at the Royal Albert Hall and in many theatres and wine bars. She is a snooker player, having been a member of the 'B' team at the Portobello Green Snooker Club and participated in the Hammersmith and District Snooker League matches.[citation needed]

Awards and honours

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  • 1985, Silver Award: Berlin International Consumer Film competition[31]
  • 1986, Special Merit Award: Medical Journalists Association and Pearl Assurance
  • 1988, International Current Affairs and Journalism Award: Royal Television Society
  • 1988, Best Educational Award: New Jersey Television and Movie Awards
  • 1989, Bronze Award (Educational Documentaries): Houston International Film Festival
  • 1989, Red Ribbon Award: American Film and Video Association
  • 1990, Certificate of Educational Merit: British Medical Association
  • 1992, Certificate of Educational Merit: British Medical Association
  • 2011, Nomination for Best Documentary: Lucerne International Film Festival[23]
  • 2012, Nomination for Best Documentary: Marbella International Film Festival[32]
  • 2014, Nomination for Best Documentary: Marbella International Film Festival[26]
  • 2015, Nomination for Best Documentary: The Indie Festival, Switzerland[citation needed]
  • 2015, Nomination for Best Documentary: Digital Griffix Film Festival, Montreal[28]
  • 2015, Nomination for Best Documentary: LaCineFest[27]
  • 2017, Special Jury Prize for World Social Impact: Queens World Film Festival[citation needed]

Bibliography

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Books

Journals

Lauer H & Shenton J: "Counterproductive contributions to African epidemiology", Madridge Journal of Immunology, Volume 1 Issue 1

Programmes and documentaries

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References

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  1. ^ Brian Deer (21 February 2012). "Death by denial: The campaigners who continue to deny HIV causes Aids". The Guardian.
  2. ^ "IN THE SEVENTIES". thisisilr.co.uk.
  3. ^ Shenton, Joan (2015). Positively False: Exposing the Myths around HIV and AIDS – 16th Anniversary Edition. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1503030886.
  4. ^ "Tony Bastable". The Guardian. 5 June 2007.
  5. ^ "Michael Bukht obituary letters". The Guardian. 11 August 2011.
  6. ^ "Joan Shenton". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015.
  7. ^ Mistreating the mentally ill. worldcat.org. OCLC 144643414.
  8. ^ "Impotence : one in ten men". trove.nla.gov.au.
  9. ^ "se:"Food : fad or fact?"". worldcat.org.
  10. ^ Smith, TC; Novella, SP (August 2007). "HIV denial in the Internet era". PLOS Med. 4 (8): e256. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256. PMC 1949841. PMID 17713982.
  11. ^ "NIH Fact Sheets - HIV/AIDS". report.nih.gov. Archived from the original on 4 January 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
  12. ^ "AIDS The Unheard Voices". YouTube. 28 February 2011.
  13. ^ "The AIDS Catch". YouTube. 28 February 2011.
  14. ^ "AZT: Cause for Concern". YouTube. 9 July 2012.
  15. ^ "AIDS and Africa". YouTube. 25 June 2012.
  16. ^ "Amsterdam Alternative AIDS Conference". YouTube. 5 July 2012.
  17. ^ "HIV/AIDS Dissidents in Europe". YouTube. 27 June 2012.
  18. ^ "Diary of an AIDS Dissident". YouTube. 10 July 2012.
  19. ^ "Search for Solutions – The Great AIDS Debate". YouTube. 13 June 2014.
  20. ^ "Aids: Cui Bono?".
  21. ^ "HIV test a crime, AIDS 'cure' killed a whole generation". RT. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  22. ^ "Positively False: Birth of a Heresy".
  23. ^ a b "And the winner is..." lucernefilmfestival.com. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  24. ^ "2012 Festival Award Winners". marbellafilmfestival.com. 10 September 2012.
  25. ^ "Positive Hell".
  26. ^ a b "Winners". marbellafilmfestival.com. 24 August 2014.
  27. ^ a b "Los Angeles CineFest". lacinefest.weebly.com. Archived from the original on 8 January 2016. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  28. ^ a b "Digital Griffix". digitalgriffix.com.
  29. ^ "Rethinking AIDS: The Board". Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  30. ^ Home running. worldcat.org. OCLC 894132128.
  31. ^ "Media Coverage > Meditel". duesberg.com.
  32. ^ "2012 Festival Award Winners". marbellafilmfestival.com. 10 September 2012.
  33. ^ "Book Reviews : Kill or Cure – Drug Injury and what to do about it". rsh.sagepub.com.
  34. ^ "Merengue & bachata, CD". link.westchesterlibraries.org. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  35. ^ "AllMusic Review by James Christopher Monger". AllMusic.
  36. ^ Holland, Patricia (July 2013). Broadcasting and the NHS in the Thatcherite 1980s: The Challenge to Public Service. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 258. ISBN 978-0230282377.
  37. ^ "Joan Shenton". mediabang.org. Archived from the original on 24 December 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  38. ^ "10 Million[14/01/86] (1986)". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015.
  39. ^ Bourne, Sandy (1987). "Psychiatry in Japan" (PDF). Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. 11 (8): 286–287. doi:10.1192/S0140078900017776.
  40. ^ "The Pill Generation (1994)". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015.
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