THE AIDS TYRANNY

Michael Fumento on the

suppression of his book after campaigning by homosexual activists

THIS week San Francisco is the venue for the Sixth International Conference on Aids. It promises to become a spectacle for activist homosexual groups like the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (Act-Up) who regularly block traffic, shout down speak- ers, and stage public 'kiss-ins', asserting that their right to impede, intimidate and disgust should be protected as freedom of expression. At the same time an exhibition by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, a homosexual who died of Aids, is criss-crossing the country. It includes various depictions of homoerotica such as a man urinating into another man's mouth and the photo- grapher himself with a bull-whip protrud- ing from his posterior. In the most recent city where it appeared, Cincinnati, Ohio, some of the locals were in an uproar over what they consider obscenity, but national- ly many others rushed to the defence of the museum, saying that the Mapplethorpe exhibition is not about good art or good taste; it is about free expression. The definition of art, we are told, is subjective but free expression is an absolute. Or is it? One would never know from the reaction to my book, The Myth of Heterosexual Aids.

My book argues that the media and other political and special interest groups in the United States and the United King- dom, and the governments of both coun- tries, have grossly exaggerated the extent of the Aids epidemic and the risk to heterosexuals, that the data showing this — while often readily available — have widely been ignored, and that those trying to get this message across have similarly been denied a forum. On the back cover of the book appears an endorsement by the former chief epidemiologist for the US Center for Disease Control. The review by a doctor from the New York City Depart- ment of Health in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) said the book is 'thoroughly researched, poignantly written, and a must-read for anyone interested in learning the dynamics of the HIV epidemic or health care plan- ning' and 'currently the best single source' on the subject. Publications both centre (Booklist) and left (the Advocate, a nation- al homosexual magazine) have proclaimed it the most important Aids book since the best-seller And the Band Played On. Though I say it myself, few books have received more publicity in America this year. Yet a small handful of persons has ensured that the book is difficult or im- possible to buy in much of the United States and cannot be presently purchased in Britain at all.

Myth came very close never to being published. It was rejected by publisher after publisher in America — 17 in all over a period of four months — not because there was a basic disagreement with the facts or necessarily because of scepticism as to its saleability but because, as one house put it to me, 'I'm not convinced that the cause of curing Aids is best served by publishing this in book form,' or, as another stated, 'I'm afraid I feel the book community is terribly overloaded on this subject, and also on Michael Fumento's point of view on this subject.' In fact, there was no other book available asserting 'my point of view'; indeed, there were no anti-alarmist books available at all. There were, however, over two hundred Aids books in print, most of which to varying extents put forward opposite positions.

Then last August, long before Myth was even printed, letters were circulating asking store owners, sight unseen, to re- fuse to stock it. After publication it appears a large number have complied. Indeed, the largest chain in the country, Walden Books, refused to order a single copy until I began complaining about the situation on national television. This did not stop the president of Walden's signing his name to a full-page advertisement in numerous newspapers in April con- demning 'diverse special interest groups' for, among other things, trying to keep certain titles out of stores. This was at the time when there was a national uproar in the United States because one large chain decided to keep The Satanic Verses off the shelves and still in the storage room (as a result of death threats). Apparently it is OK for a large chain to keep a text entirely out of its stores and for its president to preach sanctimoniously in favour of free access to all books.

Granted, not every store can carry every book, but that is not the problem here. For example, when one acquaintance asked the manager of a store in New York City why he didn't carry the book, he was told 'for editorial reasons'. Had he even seen the book? 'No.' And in Cincinnati itself, when another acquaintance went to pick up the book from the store where he'd ordered it, the assistant tried to talk him out of buying it.

Last month, a group of 30 physicians in the Pacific Northwest (the states of Washington and Oregon) wondered why they hadn't found a single store in either state that carried the book. They reported this to a Seattle television station, King, which in its television report noted that it contacted 80 different stores, also without finding the book. Indeed, only one store in the area had ever carried the book; they sold out quickly but didn't re-order until after King contacted them. One university bookstore claimed to have over 350,000 titles, including every single Aids title in print. Except one.

But if the book is extremely difficult to find in the United States, it is impossible to find in Britain, because after more than seven months of efforts to sell it on the part of my publisher, not a single British publisher will print it. This despite taunting articles in the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. None of the publishers admits to blacklisting the book, but the excuses some have provided simply don't wash. Neil Belton, editor of Century Hutch- inson's Radius series, told the Sunday Times it was rejected because it was `addressed to American concerns'. In fact, Britain's epidemic is so similar to the American one, along with the reaction of her media, government, and populace, that it would be impossible to write about Aids in America without addressing the British situation even if Britain weren't specifically mentioned throughout the book. At any rate, Belton's rationale hardly explains why the French have pub- lished the book, why the British media have given it extensive play (including two excerpts in the Sunday Times), why it was serialised both by Spain's biggest daily, El Pais, and by Australia's leading political weekly, the Bulletin.

It would be presumptuous to assume that all the British publishing houses simp- ly don't want readers to see the book. Sheer fear could have been the main reason. After a profile of me appeared in Forbes magazine activists picketed the publication and the writer received death threats. Forbes's late publisher, Malcolm Forbes — since revealed to have been a closet homosexual — wrote a retraction on demand, labelling my view on Aids 'asi- nine'. It's a sad commentary on a magazine which has as its slogan, 'No guts. No story.'

Apparently, the 'just cause' of suppress- ing this book also means its content can be distorted to dissuade people from reading it; like the review in the prestigious British science journal Nature, which made no attempt to discuss the science or the content of the book. The reviewer, Dun- can Campbell, had me ignoring the African situation when in fact I devoted a whole chapter to it. Most vicious of all was the following: Only a writer whose prejudices deny human- ity 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 debilitat- ing symptoms or die.

In fact, what the book says on page 25 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 reassur- ing to infected persons, it made the long- term outlook for the spread of the disease look bad because it meant that large num- bers of healthy persons would be spreading the virus to others indefinitely. But a consen- sus of opinion has now formed that the great majority, and perhaps almost all, of HIV- infected persons will develop debilitating symptoms or die.

How different is this, I wonder, from taking a statement like 'Judaism is not a gutter religion' and quoting it as 'Judaism is . . . a gutter religion'?

Rather than go to the medical profession for the reviewer, the person Nature chose was the openly homosexual associate edi- tor of New Statesman & Society, a maga- zine which has an established reputation for Aids alarmism. Such a review I might have expected in that publication, but surely a science magazine could have found a scientist to review my book. Incidentally, Nature refused to allow me to reply to the review.

For that matter, one of America's most prestigious science magazines, Science, turned my book over to a professor of lin- guistics, Paula Treichler, who had previously written on Aids for a Marxist quarterly, October. In October she railed against the assertion that the anus is more susceptible to penetration by the Aids virus than the vagina, not on any scientific grounds but because it makes Aids appear to be a 'gay disease' which 'protects not only the sexual practices of heterosexuality but also its ideological superiority'.

Given this ideological disdain for facts, Treichler's Science review again directly accused me of saying things that simply didn't appear in the book. She even used as evidence of my political agenda my call 'for Aids estimates to be revised downward (for all groups, not only heterosex- uals). . . •' In fact, even as my book was appearing on store shelves in January, the federal Centers for Disease Control did revise downward the projections for all groups. (I also challenged the projections of Britain's Cox Commission and those, too, have now been drastically revised downward.) Treichler's insistence on using political beliefs to determine Aids epidemiology, and Science's insistence on using Treichler, are at the core of what I am up against. It is commonly held on the Left that Aids data and an understanding of epidemiology are completely superfluous. They believe that it is wrong, in a moral sense, for a disease to pick on homosexual males while passing over those smug white middle-class yuppie heterosexuals as if they had put lamb's blood on their door frames. Ergo it does not discriminate, and damn the data and damn especially anyone who proffers it. That is why I barely got an American publisher, apparently will not get a British publisher, have had reviewers who have prevaricated about what my book says, and have been labelled everything from homophobe to homosexual to racist to sexist to pig. That is why the rules of free speech which are used by the Left to defend Robert Mapplethorpe and Salman Rushdie are denied me.

Michael Fumento is the author of The Myth of Heterosexual Aids, published by New Republic Books, an imprint of Basic Books.