The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS [Paperback] Author: Elizabeth Pisani | Language: English | ISBN:
0393337650 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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“[A] rollicking, eye-opening, hilarious account of the underbelly of international AIDS research.”—Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer
As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, Elizabeth Pisani has been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit, fierce honesty, and more than a little political incorrectness, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most: drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns. With verve and clarity, Pisani shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from “objective” data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. 12 illustrations
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- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 21, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393337650
- ISBN-13: 978-0393337655
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Medicine > Clinical > Preventive Medicine
- #23 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Internal Medicine > Pathology > Diseases > AIDS & HIV
- #30 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Preventive Medicine
If Michael Moore were to dress up in women's clothing and prowl through the red-light districts of Jakarta, we might get a book similar to "The Wisdom of Whores." But this author not only has Moore's street smarts and a lively writing style, she also has a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology. Elizabeth Pisani knows whereof she speaks, because she has spent years on the streets and in the dingy bars where AIDS futures are traded.
"Whores" is one of a rare species of book such as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" or Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" that has the power to reform an industry. In this case, the author exposes the AIDS prevention industry that sprang up when First World governments started to shovel money into the vital struggle against the HIV retrovirus. Or at least, that's where they should have shoveled it. If you think that the U.S. Government's emphasis on chastity over latex is a great way to spend your tax dollars, you definitely need to read this book.
I was particularly interested in learning why the AIDS epidemic in Asia has not taken off with the same alacrity as it did in South and East Africa.
Elizabeth Pisani may resemble one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ethereal Pre-Raphaelite models, but she talks about sex, drugs, and AIDS in the language of her subjects: the sex workers of Indonesia, China, East Timor, and Africa (foreskin soup, anyone?). She describes how governments are wasting billions of AIDS dollars on "schoolgirls and housewives and Boy Scouts" when they should be concentrating on preventive measures for the people who are actually at risk for this deadly disease: "junkies and gay guys and the people who buy and sell sex.
Elizabeth Pisani's The Wisdom of Whores - Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS is a great book (along with a great website). Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist with years of experience working on HIV/AIDS (or sex and drugs, as she puts, which sounds a lot, well, sexier) at a variety of agencies, including UNAIDS. The book is the story of her frustrations at the way the international community, national governments, NGOS and AIDS activists have dealt with the epidemics, as well as her hopes in some of the progress made.
I got interested in the book when I read an interview Pisani gave to the Guardian. The interview kinda billed the book as a controversial work where Pisani would be the mean lady who said people got AIDS because of their stupid behavior and not enough was being done because of political correctness. So, I was ready to get really pissed off with the book. That has not been the case at all.
Elizabeth Pisani is a scientist and that perspective is pervasive in the book. That's a good thing. I much prefer sober, "just the facts" perspective to touchy-feely stuff. Actually, one of the main frustrations that Pisani deals with in the book is the fact that AIDS had to be made about innocent wives and children for the international community to gear into action, as opposed to the real populations at risk in most parts of the world (except Africa, and she shows that even in Africa, the innocent wives and children trope does not work, as the data show): drug injectors and people who buy and sell sex.
To me, precisely because the book is data-driven, it was not controversial. My reaction was more, "well, if that's what the data show, so be it.
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