HIV/AIDS: The Fact & The Fiction (BOOK REVIEW)
HIV/AIDS: The Facts and The Fiction
by Chris Jennings
Health Alert Communications
Paperback, $45.00
212 pages
ISBN: 978-0-936571-11--9
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Unfortunately,
a series of interlocking misconceptions have distorted scientific and public
perceptions of HIV and the AIDS epidemic… Given a sober review, the scientific
literature is clear: (1) New York City
is the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic; (2) the theory that HIV came from
monkeys is a fallacy; and (3) the African AIDS epidemic-as-holocaust never
manifested.
The
goal of this work is to reconfigure the conceptual paradigm of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic such that resource allocations and healthcare interventions work to
serve the benefit, and not the detriment, of the populations at need.”
--
Excerpted from the Preface (pg. xiii)
A few years ago, I saw a documentary
about AIDS which began by asking which of a number of places had the highest
HIV infection rate. I was shocked to learn that the correct answer to the
question was the only American city on the list, Washington,
DC, since all the other choices were either in
Africa or the Caribbean.
I
had unwittingly fallen prey to the conventional wisdom which has led most
people to believe that AIDS originally started in Africa where it had infected
millions of victims for decades prior to crossing the Atlantic
and arriving on these shores around 1980. That piece of propaganda simply isn’t
true, according to Chris Jennings, a Harvard-educated medical writer who has
staked his career in the field of HIV research.
He has devoted much of the last 20
years in quest of the truth about the AIDS epidemic. The upshot of that
herculean effort is HIV/AIDS: The Facts and The Fiction, a
seminal work which does an excellent job of dispelling myths in the hope of educating
the populace and encouraging politicians and the medical community to reorder their
priorities.
For
example, the author argues that because of the widespread belief that Africa is
the epicenter of AIDS, a disproportionate amount of resources are wasted on
circumcisions and/or anti-retroviral drugs on patients there who aren’t apt to
be infected. Meanwhile, the readily-winnable fights against more lethal
diseases on the continent, like pneumonia and diarrhea, go underfunded.
Such surprising revelations abound in
Jennings’ informative
reference text. Though academic in nature, his encyclopedic treatise
nevertheless arrives augmented by a helpful glossary which makes it all
accessible to the layman by explaining the meanings of dozens of such obscure
terms as “cytotoxic,” ”immunoglobulin” and “neurotropic”.
A priceless primer which corrects plenty
of prevailing misconceptions about AIDS merely by accurately reporting medical
evidence rather than re-circulating false rumors.
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