The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1989 by Patricia Cohen

Sex, Lies, and the Underclass

The Fifth Avenue offices of Forbes magazine don't usually attract militant demonstrators who carry placards and chant slogans. But then Forbes doesn't usually get swept up in a controversy over AIDS. It did in June, however, when the business magazine printed a favorable profile of a conservative writer and lawyer named Michael Fumento. Fumento, you see, believes that all the hype about AIDS is, well, hype. In fact, he thinks that the vast majority of Americans are more likely to meet Shirley MacLaine in a different life than to contract the deadly HIV-virus, and that the only reason the news hasn't gotten out is that a conspiracy of self-interested scientists, opportunitistic politicians, sensationalist journalists, conservative moralizers, and fearful homosexuals have manufactured the scare.

This does not make Fumento a popular guy.

To conservatives he is a turncoat. A former writer for The Washington Times, Fumento was plucked to serve as the resident right-ring AIDS consultant on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But his condemnations of conservatives who were using the AIDS crisis to terrify America into monogamy lost him his favored-son status. Meanwhile, to many liberals and gays active in the fight against AIDS, Fumento is the Prince of Darkness, a man who would slash funds aimed at wiping out a virulent killer.

Soon after the June 26 demonstration, Malcolm Forbes himself printed a humble mea culpa, calling Fumento's views "asinine"; the apology was followed by a 13-point rebuttal to the article penned by protesters from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.

And that was just in response to a profile of the guy. Imagine the fallout from Fumento's forthcoming 432-page book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS (*1), in which he painstakingly details his case that AIDS never really threatened anyone besides gays and intravenous drug users. Nor, according to Fumento, was there ever any reason to believe that it would threaten white, middle-class America--but that didn't stop a varied group of alarmists from creating the Big Lie. "Before it would run its course," writes Fumento, "this mythical epidemic would exact a severe price, to be sure--not in lives but in wasted resources, squandered credibility, and sheer terror."

After a graphic explanation of the mechanics of transmission of the AIDS virus, known as HIV, and of the statistical probability of infection, Fumento spends most of the book criticizing just about everyone you can think of for ignoring the facts. Fumento argues that the federal Centers for Disease Control's current estimates of 1 to 1.5 million infected Americans should be halved; that this exaggerated epidemic has already peaked; that the worst is over; and that by the mid 1990s, AIDS will be a relatively minor, albeit Horrible, health problem.

A lot is at stake. The public policy implication of all this is enormous: less money and manpower for AIDS. With 14 other diseases claiming more American lives, why, demands Fumento, should we be draining away our best research talent and millions of dollars for AIDS?

It's not hard to see why the thesis of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS will be a litmus test of your commitment to treating this dread disease and of your compassion for those who have been felled by it.

But is it fair to paint Fumento as a frothing fanatic who's trying to underplay one of the modern era's greatest threats? Ultimately, no. Fumento is dead wrong about many things. But there's also a lot that he's right about--which may, unfortunately, be ignored in the political firestorm that's sure to erupt.

After all, the fearsome heterosexual "breakout," the specter of mounting corpses that monopolized magazine covers and kept yuppies in their own beds during 1986 and 1987, never did materialize. What's more, many of those who issued the most terrifying warnings--whether well-intentioned or not--should have known better.

Indeed, the nature of the homosexual epidemic was never a good model for heterosexual spread, as Fumento points out. The AIDS virus is transmitted through direct contact with infected blood (as when addicts share dirty needles or hospital patients get a tainted transfusion), or with semen or vaginal secretions during sexual intercourse. Few heterosexuals engage in once-common gay practices; in bars and bathhouses, men might have had a dozen sexual encounters a night, perhaps hundreds over the course of a year, thus increasing their exposure to HIV-infected individuals and their chances of infection. Yet even if heterosexuals were that promiscuous, the virus would still probably spread more rapidly among gays than straights since HIV is transmitted much more easily via anal intercourse than vaginal intercourse. Why? Because it is easier to rip the cellular membrane lining the urethra and rectum during intercourse than it is to tear the membrane lining the vagina; these rips then facilitate the entrance of the semen-borne AIDS virus into the partner's bloodstream. On top of that, studies show that female-to-male transmission is much rarer than male-to-female (just consider the mechanics). Fumento also competently explains why different cultural and health practices in Africa, such as reusing medical syringes, turned the epidemic there into a heterosexual one. Thus, Fumento concludes, "most heterosexuals will continue to have more to fear from bathtub drowning than from AIDS."