The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics

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Summary: Include this book in "Banned Books Week" promotions
Review: Good grief, look at the lame objections to Fumento's book. He never said heterosexuals *couldn't* get AIDS, just that they were nowhere near as likely to get it as the classic risk groups. Is there something wrong with acknowledging this?

Is his message one of tolerance for heterosexual promiscuity? No. He points out that the places where it is widely associated with heterosexual sex are places where one or more of the following are true: 1) Heavy sanctions against homosexuality impel sufferers to deny their true activity; 2) Rampant promiscuity has led to rampant VD, causing lesions which encourage the blood-to-body-fluid contact needed for AIDS transmission and concentrating the disease in prostitutes; and 3) because of severe shortages, medical professionals reuse needles themselves, effectively giving their patients the AIDS transmission rates associated with intravenous drug abusers.

In IL there was once a requirement for an AIDS test before issuing a marriage license, but after a while it was dropped because there were so many false positives on the test relative to the actual incidence in couples about to get married.

In the paperback edition I saw, Fumento noted the efforts made by various individuals and groups to suppress his politically incorrect message. I know indirectly, because it took me a couple of years to get my copy of the book back in the early 90's. I didn't succeed until another publisher took it over.

Thank you Mr. Fumento for sticking to your guns. The reviewers who gave this book fewer than three stars to date are just regurgitating a mindless left-wing catechism.

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Summary: A Voice of Calm and Reason In An Age of Hysteria
Review: If you are a non-IV drug using heterosexual, this book is simply the single best resource on HIV and AIDS available to you. The author is the first Ive ever read who is able to accurately interpret the statistics involved. He is also able to take important scientific findings, such as the issues regarding "virul load" and make them understandable to the lay person. His arguments are cogent and well documented and, best of all, the past eight years have proven them correct, from both a scientific and epidemiological standpoint. Very very few books on this issue remain in print this long. There is a reason this one has. If you fear this disease, this is the book to help you determine how realistic (or not) your fear is.

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Summary: Exposing the aids FRAUD
Review: In the early days of the epidemic, it was rational to worry that AIDS might 'explode through the general population.' Once the HIV virus was isolated, and a little known about how it spread, it became obvious that it just wasn't possible.

Back in 1987, Michael Fumento wrote an article in Commentary which told why the general heterosexual population was not at signifigant risk for AIDS. He thought everyone would be glad to know that tens of millions of USAmericans would NOT die of an incurable disease associated with incredible suffering.

Wrong.

Lots of people wanted everyone at risk, or, at least, wanted everyone to believe that everyone was at risk, regardless of whether or not it was true. Fumento was denounced, harassed, and, lied about for stating that most AIDS victims would continue to be male homosexuals, IV drug users, women in a long term relationship with men in the first two groups, and children of women with HIV.

The terrible thing is, that, by saying "Everyone is equally at risk," those at high risk didn't get the information they needed to protect themselves. Thousands died in the U.S. because they were deliberately misinformed about AIDS by those with political agendas to push -- agendas they weren't willing to argue for honestly.

Thirteen years later, the story continues. Very few cases of AIDS are contracted heterosexually, except for the women sleeping regularly with bisexuals and drug users, and Fumento continues to be denounced. Even people whom came to agree with him, such as Gabriel Rotello, felt it necessary to say nasty things about him -- things that weren't true, by the way. And those whom WANT heterosexuals to be at high risk for AIDS continue to claim Fumento was wrong, as you can see by looking at some other reviews on this page.

The one thing you won't see is facts to back up their assertions, for the simple reason that there are none.

Read this book if you want a fascinating account of how the truth about a terrible disease was surpressed. And check out Fumento.com to find out the latest lies being spread about AIDS -- but only if you value the truth above political correctness.

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Summary: And still we fall into the same old traps....
Review: It makes me sad to see that some people can still fall for the old "homosexual vs heterosexual" argument.

Fumento's premise may be right, but the driver for this disease isn't to do with whether you're gay or straight - it's to do with how you practice sex. What you do in bed. Safe? Unsafe?

A straight person having unprotected anal sex is more at risk than a gay person who has protected sex.

Let's get beyond the gay vs straight no-brained arguments and start applying a little bit of intelligence to our analysis of books like this....

Rating:
Summary: Pure Fiction
Review: Labelling this novel as a non-fiction book should at best be considred false advertising. Junk science and homophobia should not be passed of as fact.

And it's a pity that I can't give this book 0 stars.

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Summary: No wonder this book is hard to find.
Review: Revision: Last paragraph deleted 9/29/03 (too many words)

The Author: Every now and then a person comes along who lives a passion for finding and sharing truth. He is not satisfied with merely being well-fed and lying as needed to optimize his professional stature. He takes the risks, endures the persecution and keeps on fighting. Such is Michael Fumento.

The Book: It would take no less than Fumento's 463 pages (with 47 pages of references and notes) to unravel over a decade of lies emanating from the practitioners of AIDS-transmitting behaviors, the media, and the most visible public health professionals. I can see that there is still a need for this message today when I talk with misled others, when I see misleading public transit AIDS ads and when I hear the news.

Values: If I went into this book looking for a gay-bashing tirade I would not find it. If I approached it with the attitude of (some) Christians that homosexuals deserve to die because of their behavior, I would not find any support from Fumento. If I went into this book feeling 100% not responsible for the spread of this disease I would encounter explanation that we are all responsible at least indirectly because of our ignorance, gullibility and tolerance of shabby news-reporting. What is this guy's agenda, anyway? Fumento could just as easily have chosen issues other than AIDS (and he has done this in other articles and books) to further his agenda, which seems to be to expose the misdeeds of alarmists, the media and health professionals who have abused perfectly good science as they furthered their own careers at the expense of victims of disease and ignorance.

Educational Value: I recommend this book for enhancing one's practical and logical understanding of: AIDS transmission physiology and psychology; AIDS-enabling co-morbidity; epidemiology; statistics; public health systems; the media; and news analysis. Also, one can learn numerous well-documented, less-promoted facts about AIDS. And by studying the behaviors of some public health officials one might identify morality conflicts for some of his own potential career choices.

Reading Level and Data: Sometimes I had to re-read paragraphs because some of the logic and statistical thinking was new to me. But, a thorough grasp of statistics in epidemiology is not essential. After all, how much sophistication does it take to understand Fumento's copiously explained statements (abbreviated here): that receptive anal intercourse (for men or women) is by far the most AIDS-risky sexual behavior; or that early homosexual AIDS victims each averaged almost 1100 lifetime partners (1 survey); or that among heterosexuals it is overwhelmingly the partners of intravenous drug abusers (IVDA) who are at highest risk; or that blood-transfusion-infected heterosexuals often required years, with regular intercourse, to infect their wives; or that female prostitutes in the United States do little to spread AIDS, but do sometimes acquire it from pimps or boyfriends; or that there is increased risk in vaginal intercourse if women are menstruating, have an infection or have another STD; or that in heterosexual lifestyles it is the character of, not the number of sexual partners that determines a woman's AIDS risk; or that about ten times as many native-born American males are diagnosed with breast cancer each year as are diagnosed with AIDS from heterosexual intercourse; or that there are also major differences in AIDS transmission rates depending on gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and inner-city vs. suburban living, or that in 1993 AIDS was continuing to receive about 20 times as much per death as cancer in federal research and education dollars?

Why Read About AIDS? I believe that, there is a learning obligation for the lucky ones who do not get AIDS. For example, if everyone whose relative or loved one got AIDS were to broadly self-educate about AIDS, there would be a great reduction of suffering in the land - because victims would be better understood, because solutions could more likely be found, and because it would create "public supervision" of public health officials, activists, authors and the media. While Fumento does not dwell on the horrors of the AIDS illness, he does explain how those horrors have been imparted to (probably) thousands of excess persons in this country because funds had been diverted from categories of persons who were known to be at highest risk, and had been invested instead on those known to be at extremely low risk. But this was after huge waste in paying for professional salaries and media campaigns.

What about Africa? Anyone who doubts any significant heterosexual AIDS prevalence in the USA (aside from that of partners of IVDA) is asked why we hear of a large heterosexual AIDS prevalence in Africa. Fumento explains: 1) Part of the African AIDS prevalence actually is from lied-about male homosexual behaviors. 2) There are rampant malaria, STD's and other diseases which have already weakened immune systems, increasing AIDS vulnerability. 3) There is severe limitation on the availability of health care and medications. 4) During earlier phases of the epidemic there was no money to pay for the testing of donated blood or for eliminating re-use of needles in hospitals. 5) Prostitutes with STD's can't get medical treatment. 6) Africa has a few high-prevalence AIDS regions just as the USA does - but the media has tended to report a high prevalence over broad regions of Africa.

Hate crimes: At least in the 1980's and early 1990's, homosexual activists, some public health professionals and the media vigorously promoted exaggerations of AIDS prevalence and predictions, with some even "foreseeing" the demise of the civilization. Given that some of the public actually believed these exaggerations and also saw through the lies of the media which denied the predominance of homosexual behavior and intravenous drug abuse in AIDS causation, it is surprising there was not more violence.

Rating:
Summary: No wonder this book is hard to find.
Review: This book has facts to back up it's claim that AIDS is/will not be the plague it has been touted as.

Its obvious that the PC and homosexual crowd don't want this information out there. Read the introduction in the paperback version to get a real eye-opening account of how books like this are kept from the public.

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Summary: The truth is STILL out there
Review: This book infuriates a lot of people, particularly because after almost a decade...it has proven to be true. This is the only disease that is not reportable or investigatable by public health officials. Why? Special interest group pressure by the homosexuals. This is the most politicized disease ever to afflict mankind. What people are trying to scare you with doesn't exist. (How many people do you personally know who are not gay and who have AIDS? Think about that, now that the disease has been with us more than a decade...) What the media are saying about this disease isn't true. What the author says is calm, authoritative, well-researched and well-written. Should be required reading for every journalist and teacher in the land.

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Summary: Much-needed antidote to hysteria
Review: This is one of the most important books of the 1990s. It changed my life, and can change yours, too.

AIDS has afflicted gay men and hemophiliacs in numbers which are wildly disproportionate compared to their total numbers in the population. To ignore the facts, and pretend that all people who engage in any kind of sexual activity are equally at risk, is to encourage those in high-risk groups to engage in more risky behavior, and is thereby doing them a great, great disservice which invariably costs many more lives.

Before you buy into the PC hype, you would do well to consult the CDC's own data, which was a major information source for this book.

AIDS is indeed a great tragedy, which is why it's so important that we be honest about it and ignore the PC hysteria.

Michael Fumento had a thankless task in writing this book, for which he has mostly received scorn, and even lost his job at one point. Regardless, thank Whatever that something possessed him to write it, for we can all benefit from this courageous work.

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Summary: this book was censored. Unbelievably.
Review: Very sound science reporting. This book was attacked for its basic premise that HIV is not common among heterosexuals. Nothing homophobic. Anal sex is the high risk factor (more widely practiced by gay men, and with many partners) as well as I.V. drug use. Book doesn't say heterosexuals can't contract it.