BOOK REVIEW : AIDS Research: Political Triumph?

THE MYTH OF HETEROSEXUAL AIDS by Michael Fumento Basic Books/A New Republic Book $22.95; 411 pages

If you’re straight and you don’t shoot up, Michael Fumento has some good news about AIDS in his new book, “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS”: You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than by AIDS.

But those who suffer from AIDS, those who care for victims of it and those who struggle to prevent and cure AIDS will almost certainly see Fumento and his book as bad news indeed. To put it bluntly, will we fight the war against AIDS for the sake of gay men and drug abusers?

Fumento addresses this issue with the intensity and fervor of a true believer. Because the heterosexual population is not generally at risk, he insists, resources that have been applied to AIDS should be diverted to other diseases.

“It is not fair to penalize victims of cancer or other life-threatening illnesses because they do not knit quilts or blockade the Golden Gate Bridge or picket magazines that say things they don’t believe should be allowed in print,” Fumento argues.

Fumento openly ridicules the widespread public concern over AIDS, and he condemns much of the effort that has been expended in AIDS education, research and treatment as “the ultimate triumph of politics over science.”

He concedes that some heterosexuals get AIDS, but insists that the disease is not truly an epidemic. Of the 106,000 AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control through August, 1989, Fumento states that only 3% were native-born Americans who contracted the disease through heterosexual intercourse. Another 2% were victims of tainted blood transfusions, and 1% were hemophiliacs. Most of the rest were gay men (61%), intravenous drug users (21%), or both (7%).

According to Fumento, a heterosexual man or woman who refrains from drug abuse “has less of a chance of getting AIDS than of being struck by lightning or drowning in a bathtub.”

Fumento devotes much of his book to a discussion of complex and obscure medical data. He asks us to believe that it is the “alarmists” in government and medicine who have manipulated the data to shape public opinion and serve their own political interests.

But “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” is an unabashed and unsubtle polemic, and Fumento rails against “the liberal democratizers,” “the conservative moralizers,” “the homosexual lobby,” “the doctors of doom” and various other malefactors for misusing AIDS to serve their own political and moral interests.

Fumento’s premise is unassailable. The search for truth is the essence of both science and democracy--it is wrong to distort the truth in order to manipulate the behavior of a free mind or a free people. But his conclusion is dead wrong. If we are looking for more resources to fight cancer, we should direct our attention to the defense budget and not to AIDS research. And if “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” encourages complacency in our efforts to prevent, treat and cure the disease, the author will have rendered us no service at all.