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untrue, and the author knows it. Hetero sexual men can infect heterosexual Beyond the evidence women with HIV, he admits, and hetero Duncan Campbell sexual women can infect heterosexual men. Transmission of HIV can occur in a single (penetrative) sexual act. The The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and consequence is of course that HIV can Partisan Politics. By Michael Fumento. Basic Books: 1990. Pp. 411. $22.95. pass sexually from man to woman to man to woman, all heterosexuals. Fumento's MICHAEL Fumento's writings and ideas in partner studies, and is observed axiom is the real myth. He admits this: have already made a significant public epidemiologically - on a particularly "There is no physical law saying that impact through the pages of the British large scale in Africa - causes him little tertiary transmission cannot occur." and US newspapers in which he has discomfort. Where he cannot argue such Fumento goes on to admit that tertiary argued his controversial case for more evidence away by anecdote or by a transmission has been observed, then than two years. His analysis has been used declamatory sideswipe at "alarmists", he makes several extraordinary attempts to to criticize general public-health educa passes on, leaving the rents in the fabric argue away data showing heterosexual tion, to attack the scale and priority of of his argument unpatched. transmission which he finds inconvenient. AIDS research funding, and to undermine The true myth of this book - the prop There is a well-known report, published in 'safer sex' education. The publication osition that heterosexual transmission of 1986, of a Swedish sailor, Lars, found to of his book unhappily coincides with the 'pure' sort (which he labels tertiary be the centre of a network of six entirely renewed (and ultimately lethal) campaigns transmission), cannot occur- is an inven 'tertiary' cases of heterosexual HIV trans intended to assure orthodox heterosex tion by Fumento. Inevitably, hetieshimself mission. "Possible explanations for Lars", uals that it is safe to have unprotected in knots. First, he admits that his title is writes Fumento, include "an extremely sex again, and to suggest to governments misleading: "The 'myth' of heterosexual efficient strain of HIV, his proclivity for that they can stop spending money on AIDS consists of a series of myths, one of sex in a manner unusually conducive to AIDS because (for the most part) only which is not that heterosexuals do get it." HIV transmission" (this is code for anal gays face death. Fumento then re-asserts his central axiom, intercourse) or "a lesson in the laws of Fumento is a polemicist, not a scientist. and claims that heterosexuals get HIV in probability". By his last option, the author His fundamental hypothesis, only slightly fection "only from shared needles, means to suggest that the heterosexual disguised, is that AIDS is necessarily a from transfusions, from clotting factor, ... infection of the sailor, three of his subse disease of disgrace, requiring the trans from their mothers at or before birth, and quent female partners, the husband of one mission of both stigma and a virus in sometimes through sexual intercourse of these women and the child of another order for someone to become infected. with persons in these categories and with was merely a coincidental statistical arte Fumento's analysis of HIV transmission is bisexuals" - but never from another fact. According to Fumento's axiom, the derived from this proposition. Hence, in heterosexual, infected heterosexually. sailor - being heterosexual himself - Fumento's world, heterosexual transmis The axiom is restated again and again: cannot transmit HIV to another hetero sion of HIV cannot and does not occur if "AIDS will pick off a person here and sexual, therefore these other infections the infected partner was himself or herself there in this group [heterosexuals], but the are coincidences, not transmission path infected with HIV through heterosexual original infected partner will be in one of ways. He rejects the clear and obvious intercourse. The fact that such trans the two groups in which the disease is deduction from these and similar data. mission is both theoretically predictable epidemic" (my emphasis). It may be thought that anyone whose from coefficients of transmission measured This proposition is untenable and attitude to empirical evidence is as ca valier as this has little to contribute to public debate except the aggravation of prejudice and ignorance. The one impor tant, substantiated part of Fumento's 400-page tract could have been said in a long footnote elsewhere. This is where Fumen to decries some of the more hyster ical propagandists who have portrayed Losing ground - reproduced AIDS as a new Black Death leading to from Cadillac Desert by M. widespread and general morbidity. The Reisner, the photograph shows main offenders in this category include saltdepositscoveringfarmland such authors as Masters, Johnson and in the San Joaquin Valley, the Kolodny, whose text Crisis; Heterosexual sparse natural resources have been stretched, exploited and Behaviour in the Age of AIDS was pub depleted and a million acres of lished in 1988, and propagandists like the American west in California Dr. John Seale, who continue to urge the alone may be affected. Pub• public to fear the possibility of social lished bySeckerand Warburg in and/or casual transmission of HIV. Britain, £25; Viking/Penguin in But Fumento's criticism of these writers the United States, hbk $22.95, degenerates into lumping together all pbk$9.95. those whose views he does not care for, labelling them abusively as "alarmists" or "condomites". In fact, Fumento has much in common with authors like Seale, including a desire to enlarge his reputation for AIDS iconoclasm, and a conservative political agenda in which homophobia plays a major part. ..,.. NATURE · VOL 343 · 25 JANUARY 1990 321 © 1990 Nature Publishing Group