c:\doc\web\98\02\fumen.txt
Date sent:        Tue, 20 Jan 1998 18:25:37 -0500
From:             Michael Fumento <MFumento@compuserve.com>
Subject:          Just came across this review--skip all the way to bottom
To:               Blind.Copy.Receiver@compuserve.com


>From Booklist , 10/01/95:
There is nothing more thrilling than a good journalist with her dander up.
Reporting on AIDS and,
of necessity, running with the many (often well-intentioned) rascals of
AIDS science and politics
have really roused Burkett. Her deposition on those rascals and a few real
samaritans comes in 12
reports on various aspects of what one chapter title aptly calls "AIDS,
Inc." --that is, the business
of making a living off the disease. First in her rogues' gallery are two
supreme egoists,
self-aggrandizing retrovirologist Robert Gallo and second-rate author
turned AIDS-harpy Larry
Kramer. From these petty demons she turns to turf-protecting virus and drug
researchers,
marketers to the "AIDS community," race and sex discriminators among AIDS
activists, the
strange case of "The Immaculate Transmission" of HIV to a supposed virgin
by her dentist, MTV's
exploitation of AIDS patient Pedro Zamora, profiteering drug companies, the
politicians both
pro-and antigay who obstruct the public health response to AIDS, and the
attention-grabbing but
mostly ineffectual protesters of ACT-UP. Burkett's indignation flares from
every page, but she
rarely lets it distract her from making sound cases against her villains
and for her heroes. Making
those cases, she forcefully demonstrates that the common sense to treat
AIDS as a disease has
seldom gotten a chance to be heard, much less acted upon. There are three
essential books on
AIDS' cultural impact: Shilts' And the Band Played On (rev., 1993),
Fumento's Myth of
Heterosexual AIDS (rev., 1993), and this book. 
Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved