It's a disease, of course, caused by something called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), and, of course, it's transmitted by unprotected sex. Or is it? Not on your life, according to physiology professor Robert Root-Bernstein, a MacArthur Prize-winning researcher at Michigan State University.
Root-Bernstein spends the first 50 pages of his carefully documented book demolishing just about every preconception you may have had about AIDS. Under "Anomalies: Observations about AIDS That Do Not Fit the Picture," he cites study after study that shows, among other fairly mind-boggling findings, that many people with HIV remain healthy while others without HIV die of AIDS-like illnesses, and that HIV is difficult to sexually transmit.
Root-Bernstein lays the blame for AIDS on immune suppression by drugs (either intravenous recreational drugs, routine doses of prescription antibiotics, or the two in combination), not on questionable sexual practices and a harmless retrovirus.
C'mon, you say, how can the world scientific establishment, and the US government (which in '94 will spend $1.3 billion dollars on AIDS) be wrong? Very easily, says Root-Bernstein when, as his subtitle suggests, political motivations force researchers into a conceptual straitjacket before they are ready.
- Ken Coupland
Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus, by Robert Root-Bernstein, US $27.95. Free Press (MacMillan): +1 (212) 702-2000.
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