The books by Culshaw, Maggiore and Lauritsen
may be the best introductions for the general reader.
Those by Hodgkinson, Shenton, and Burkett are by journalists who covered the subject and came to see how inadequate, not to say wrongheaded, the official view was (and remains).
Hodgkinson is required reading on the subject of AIDS in Africa.The books by Root-Bernstein and by Duesberg are thorough treatments of the scientific and medical ramifications.Fumento exposes how misleading, how ungrounded in fact, is much of the established view, and how wrong the hysterical predictions have been.Callen’s story is autobiographical and grippingly honest. What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? by Christine Maggiore; American Foundation for AIDS Alternatives, 4th rev. ed., 2000; 126 pp.
Very concise but comprehensive, and cites many references. Maggiore had been told that she was HIV-positive; knew she couldn’t have been infected; went on to get married and have children. She set up the website http://www.aliveandwell.org/ which describes itself in these words:“Most, if not all impartial scientific findings on AIDS contrast with orthodox views and mainstream opinions. Based on this growing body of scientific, medical, and epidemiological evidence, Alive & Well provides information that raises questions about the accuracy of HIV tests, the safety and effectiveness of AIDS drug treatment, and the validity of most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS. Our mission is to open much needed dialogue on HIV, to advocate for unprejudiced scientific research on AIDS, to assist people in making truly informed decisions about their lives and health, and to provide legal, medical and peer support for HIV positives seeking immune-enhancing alternatives to toxic AIDS interventions.”The book concludes with 30 pages of testimony from HIV-positive people who live healthy lives without anti-retroviral treatment; some of them since 1985, when the first HIV tests came into use. The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex by John Lauritsen; Asklepios, 1993; ISBN 0-943742-08-0; 480 pp.
Lauritsen is a survey researcher who was shocked by the incompetence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in assessing AIDS statistics, in particular, in obscuring the fact that the gay men who contracted AIDS had made much and often indiscriminate use of “recreational” drugs. This book makes a comprehensive case against HIV and for drugs as the cause of AIDS; and it indicts convincingly a number of public and private organizations for a variety of misdeeds. Lauritsen is himself openly gay and experienced outrage from both the mainstream Establishment and from AIDS activists; but the facts he adduces have never been contradicted.The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How A Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics by Michael Fumento; Basic Books, 1990; 432 pp.
Fumento does not deny that HIV causes AIDS, but his main point--that it has not spread into the general population--is evidence against a contagious disease. But his focus is primarily on social matters, as the book’s sub-title indicates. He says much, cogently, about the misleading and often hysterical official and media pronouncements; and how the concept of “heterosexual AIDS” serves the political agendas of various groups.Surviving AIDS by Michael Callen; HarperCollins, 1990; 243 pp.
Callen was among the first cohorts of people diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. Most of those died within months of diagnosis, but Callen survived for a dozen years by heeding the advice of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who had observing the health-challenging “fast-lane” lifestyle lived by some of his patients and had predicted that something like AIDS would happen. Callen and Richard Berkowitz (who published his memoirs in 2003), with Sonnabend’s help, began the “safe sex” crusade.Callen was agnostic as to the role of HIV in AIDS, though he was clear that the anti-retroviral treatments were not working, and he was quite clear that extremely promiscuous and unhealthy living had brought on AIDS in his own case.Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus by Robert Root-Bernstein;
Free Press, 1993; 512 pp.
Root-Bernstein is a physiologist, a sociologist-philosopher of science, and a former MacArthur Fellow. He dissects all the medical and scientific evidence and suggests that AIDS is most likely the result of multiple sustained attacks on the immune system. He demolishes claims that HIV alone is responsible; for instance, he shows that AIDS in hemophiliacs is not evidence that it was acquired via contaminated blood products. The case he makes has never been contradicted, only ignored. Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter H. Duesberg; Regnery, 1997; 722 pp.
The case made by Duesberg has also never been contradicted. Duesberg, one of the first and most distinguished retrovirologists, has argued from the beginning that no retrovirus could do what HIV is claimed to do. He explains why researchers wanted to find a viral cause for AIDS, and reminds of the SMON epidemic in Japan, where researchers similarly chased an infectious agent until finally realizing that the illnesses and deaths came from over-prescribing of the drug Enterovioform (clioquinol). Duesberg also demolishes the notion that AIDS in hemophiliacs shows that it is contagious, and adduces much evidence that drug abuse is responsible.AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science by Neville Hodgkinson;
Fourth Estate, 1996; 420 pp.
Hodgkinson covered the AIDS story for the Sunday Times (London) and thereby came to realize how mistaken and misleading official statements were. He describes in detail the censorship of dissident views by, for example, Nature magazine. He explains why Africans find it advantageous to go along with, indeed to actively support the myth that Africa is being ravaged by AIDS.Positively False : Exposing the Myths Around HIV and AIDS by Joan Shenton;
I. B. Tauris, 1998; 277 pp.
Shenton produced TV documentaries, and “has recorded an extraordinary account of the tyranny of orthodoxy imposed by some scientists and the pharmaceutical industry”. Covers the AIDS establishment, dissident scientists, AIDS in Africa, AIDS conferences, AIDS drugs, and more. The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the Age of AIDS by Elinor Burkett;
Houghton Mifflin, 1995; 399 pp.
Burkett covered the AIDS story in Miami, and uncovered much wrong with official attitudes and actions. Like the books of the other journalists, her story and conclusions carry much weight because she had no pre-existing personal axe to grind.