Mendel leads benefit concert

In January 2000, Mendel led a benefit concert in Hollywood for the AIDS denialist group Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives , with a speech by the founder, Christine Maggiore , and distribution of free copies of her self-published book, What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? . The Foo Fighters website featured a section devoted to Alive & Well. Sandra Thurman , the director of the Office of National AIDS Policy , said this was “extraordinarily irresponsible behavior … There is no doubt about the link between HIV and AIDS in the respected scientific community.” All links and references to Alive & Well were removed from the Foo Fighters website by March 2003.