The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.

• Author: Cohen, Patricia

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...