Exploding myths - excerpt from 'The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS'; the politics of AIDS

National Review, Dec 13, 1993 by Michael Fumento

Want to write a best-seller? Don't contradict a widely held and politically correct myth.

`UNTIL now, most experts have held that everyone is at risk of acquiring AIDS, so messages promoting less risky behavior, they say, should be broadcast scattershot .... But other experts are now arguing otherwise." So read the first paragraph of a front-page New York Times story, in March 1993, entitled "Targeting Urged in Attack on AIDS." Six years had elapsed between the appearance of my first article suggesting that AIDS be treated like other diseases-by identifying and then reducing risk factors--and the time that suggestion appeared in America's newspaper of record. What happened during that time to me and to the first edition of my book shows how the AIDS debate has been dominated by politics, to the detriment of science and public health.

As of August of 1988, I had spent nine months negiotiating with a conservative think tank concerning a fellowship to complete the book. Everything had been confirmed and I was told that a letter would be sent in a matter of days with the official invitation. Then an article of mine appeared--a cover story in The New Republic--criticizing some conservatives' reaction to AIDS. Several weeks went by without my receiving any letter. When I finally called I was told the fellowship had been denied and that was the end of it. There was never any written notification or reason given. The infamous article, incidentally, was entitled "The Political Uses of an Epidemic."

Months before Myth was complete, letters were already circulating to book distributors asking that the book be kept off store shelves. When it was published, in 1989, my editor and I thought that only a few stores would go along with this boycott. We were wrong. Indeed, one of the largest chains in the country refused to buy a single copy until I announced their boycott on national TV. An ABC reporter called them about it, and then and there, it seems, they decided to begin stocking it, albeit too late for the book to take advantage of the publicity. A short while later, the president and CEO of this chain signed his name to a full-page advertisement in numerous newspapers condemning "special-interest groups" for, among other things, trying to keep certain titles out of stores. This threat to the Republic, of which the ad warned, was the effort of a Christian group to get the chain to stop selling girlie magazines. Perhaps if Myth had included some dirty pictures, the chain would have felt obliged to carry it.

In metropolitan Denver, where I was living the following year--an area with a population of about 2.5 million people--the book was unavailable at the distributor level, and all the stores just happened to be sold out. Both the Tattered Cover, one of the largest, best-known bookstores in the nation, and the B. Dalton store advised me they had no intention of reordering the book, at least until the paperback version came out. At the Tattered Cover I was told they weren't carrying the book because "it is over six months old." I personally surveyed their massive collection of AIDS books and found that of the 80 books they carried on AIDS, 68 were published in 1989 or earlier (the time of the search was October of 1990). The store carried books that said AIDS is really syphilis, that the disease is the result of biological warfare, that it can be cured through a positive mental attitude. It had Gene Antonio's book, The AIDS Coverup, which said that as much as a fifth of the U.S. population would be dead or dying of AIDS by 1990. It had AIDS books from publishing houses so tiny that some of them weren't even typeset. But it did not have The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, published in hardcover by Basic Books.

Ironically, the Tattered Cover, in celebration of Banned Books Week, had just organized a seminar on censorship, mounting a large store display. Needless to say, Myth was not featured.

A Foundation of Lies

HAVING denied the public the right to see the book, AIDS activists concentrated on telling them what they would have read had they been able to obtain a copy. To summarize one review, Donna Minkowitz at the Village Voice said it was "bilge" built on "a foundation of lies." Common epithets included: cruel, uncompassionate, racist, sexist, and homophobic.

Probably the most prestigious science journal in the world is the British magazine Nature. Nature's view of Myth ran quite early, something journals will do when they are making a conscious effort to affect how a book will be received. The reviewer was Duncan Campbell, who, among many other things,

asserted:

Only a writer whose prejudices deny humanity could write in such bad taste as this: "Although AIDS is no joke, there is good news and bad news about the length of HIV infectiousness ... the 'good news' [is] that the great majority, and perhaps almost all, of HIV-infected persons will develop debilitating symptoms or die."

In fact, what the book says is:

The "good news" here is actually terrible news for anyone infected: Originally, it was thought that only a small percentage of those infected with the virus would go on to develop the disease. While this was reassuring to infected persons, it made the long-term outlook for the spread of the disease look bad because it meant that large numbers of healthy persons would be spreading the virus to others indefinitely. But a consensus of opinion has now formed that the great majority, and perhaps almost all, of HIV-infected persons will develop debilitating symptoms or die.