LETTERS
Aids myth and reality
Sir: Charges of distortion and suppression, levelled against me by Michael Fumento while complaining (`The Aids tyranny', 23 June) that he failed to find a British publisher who wanted his book The Myth of Heterosexual Aids, cannot go un- answered.
Fumento complained about a review I wrote for Nature, which he says should have found a scientist instead. He was wrong. Unlike Fumento, I am a scientist (physicist) by professional training, and by practice in the way I evaluate and report evidence. I am also a professional journal- ist, not (unlike Fumento) a polemicist. The foundation of both professions is the fair and complete assessment of all evidence, not just that which suits a particular theory.
Fumento alleged that I edited a quota- tion from his book in order to reverse its meaning. the suggestion is false. It is apparent, including in his Spectator article, that Fumento does mean to say that it is `good news' for people like him that almost all HIV positive persons are expected to die of Aids. Otherwise, they (the infected) would 'be spreading the virus to others indefinitely'.
Fumento's report was long on paranoia and lurid side-detail, but failed to make the case that publishers are in thrall to a homosexual activist mafia of which I sup- pose I am meant to be part. Neither evidence nor reason support this hypoth- esis. A simpler and better hypothesis is that most publishers know a badly resear- ched and misleading book when they see one, and put their credibility and money elsewhere.
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