The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis [Paperback]

John Lauritsen (Author, Editor), Ian Young (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0943742102 | ISBN-13: 978-0943742106 | Publication Date: January 1, 1997

This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the real reasons gay men are becoming sick in ways that are called AIDS. The editors, John Lauritsen and Ian Young, and the other six contributors to The AIDS Cult examine psychological and cultural issues the ways religious intolerance, group fantasies, toxic rugs, pharmaceutical propaganda, deadly counselling, and a Cult of Doom have acted together to destroy the health of gay men. In his Introduction Ian Young writes: The orthodox view of our protracted health crisis as a highly infectious contagion from without has been found wanting.... we must seek the causes of this and other medical dilemmas in our own society, our own assumptions, our group-fantasies, our regimens, our recreations, and our rituals.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Reviewed by Mark K. Anderson. In 1942, American physiologist Walter B. Cannon wrote about a phenomenon he called "voodoo death". In his essay of the same name, Cannon detailed anthropological accounts of Aboriginal tribes whose doctors have the power to kill errant tribe members merely by pointing a bone at the offender. The condemned believes in the power of the shaman's curse, and within a matter of hours or days dutifully dies as prescribed. In The AIDS Cult, gay rights activist and HIV/AIDS dissident John Lauritsen has compiled a compelling group of 10 essays on the "bone-pointing" aspects of the AIDS epidemic. All the authors present cause for doubting the HIV=AIDS=death formula. Some question the first equals sign, some the second equals sign, some both. As co-editor Ian Young writes in his introduction to the book, "All [contributors] agree that the orthodox view of our protracted health crisis -- as a highly infectious contagion from without -- has been found wanting, and that we must seek the causes of this and other medical dilemmas in our own society, our own assumptions, our group-fantasies, our regimens, our recreations and our rituals." --Springfield Advocate, 20 March 1997

Reviewed by Henry H. Bauer The present collection of essays takes as a medical given that HIV=AIDS is wrong and considers psycho-social and psychosomatic factors. The discussions are relevant to psychosomatic illness, social psychology, faith-healing, alternative medicine. Lauritsen's chapter II, "Psychological and toxicological causes of AIDS", briefly reviews salient points made in his earlier writings: that "HIV infection" is diagnosed by presence of antibodies, which in other diseases is taken as a sign of immunization; that it is only a small sub-set of gay men that seem at special risk for AIDS; that this small sub-set is known to have typically suffered recurring sexually-transmitted diseases, treatment and over-treatment with antibiotics, and high use of alcohol, tobacco and "recreational" drugs including the "poppers" that are almost certainly the prime cause of Kaposi's sarcoma.... Michael Ellner & Andrew Cort, in "Programmed to die: cultural hypothesis & AIDS", (Chapter VI) remind us that people in Africa, Australia, and Haiti indubitably do die when they have been marked for death by voodoo or by bone-pointing. It is then chilling to read the following chapter, in which Cass Mann describes "Deadly counsels: the necrophiliacs of 'AIDS'": how following the advice of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, innumerable "counselors" urge their clients to prepare for death as soon as they have tested HIV-positive! ... "Being a gay man today in a commercial gay culture is in and of itself a toxic and dangerous condition": for gay "liberation" led to infantile excesses; a life-style inappropriate for adults became the cultural norm, and now there's added a supposedly incurable virus that makes living beyond 40 or so in any case moot.... Chapter IX is by Michael Callen who survived a dozen years after a diagnosis of AIDS (note, not just HIV antibodies). He makes this unfamiliar but crucial point: "The activists only seem to talk about two possible outcomes to taking an experimental drug: one is that it works and the other is that it doesn't work. But there is a third, much more common possibility, which is that you will be worse off than if you did nothing at all" (p. 186).... The last chapter by Ian Young returns to some chilling psychological facts, notably "a psychological epidemic among uninfected gay men" (p. 188). They suffer "survivor's guilt": "in today's breezy, out-of-the-closet gay ghetto, HIV Negative men tend to be profoundly clinically depressed, anxious, disoriented, hypochondriacal, uncertain about the future, sexually dysfunctional, deeply demoralized and psychically numb" (p. 189). --Journal of Scientific Exploration, Autumn 1997

About the Author

John Lauritsen is a retired survey research analyst. He has been active in Gay Liberation since the summer of 1969. His books include The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein (2007), A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love (1998) and The AIDS War (1993). Ian Young is a poet living in Toronto. He has been active in Gay Liberation since the 1960s, as an activist, writer and publisher. Among his many books are The Stonewall Experiment (1995) and The AIDS Dissidents: An annotated bibliography (1993).

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pagan Press (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943742102
• ISBN-13: 978-0943742106
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,393,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frightening yet hopeful explanations of the AIDS debacle, August 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (Paperback)

An indispensable member of the unorthodox AIDS trilogy--including The Stonewall Experiment by Ian Young and What if Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS was Wrong by Christine Maggiore--this book presents articles and essays by several men who have a lot to say about why AIDS happened and why it continues to happen. And it has very little if nothing to do with a virus. Citing every possibility from epidemic hysteria to psychoneuroimmunology to death by poisoning, this book alone does more for AIDS research than 18 years and 40 billion dollars of "official" research will ever contribute. Whether you agree that there's something terribly amiss with AIDS research and official explanations and treatments or not, this book is an amazing grass-roots attempt to open up dialog and encourage the kind of critical thought sorely needed in the highly political AIDS Industry. After reading this book, you'll come to realize that the socially-constructed disease known as AIDS can stop if we want it to--we have the power and always have.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stop the sacrifice. Burn the Quilt! (Ian Young), June 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (Paperback)

"The AIDS Cult" presents an array of truly mind-opening essays from a variety of radical thinkers. The main message of the book may be summed up, roughly, as follows: The "AIDS" epidemic is not the result of a retrovirus called "HIV". It is the result of a variety of social, psychological, and cultural phenomena, which have mistakenly been slighted by Western medicine in favor of tiny bits of genetic material magnified dozens of times using PCR. The cost of this mistaken oversight is our continuing inability to deal with "AIDS" in a humane and compassionate manner. People always look at me with strange eyes when I start talking about psychological, social, and cultural causes of "AIDS". They often say, "You're nuts, Darin. That's just crap. Boy, do you need some counselling." Yet I wonder who really needs the "counselling"? The fact is, the relationship between mind and body in the history of medicine has always been the RULE, not the EXCEPTION. As anyone who has studied cognitive science or psychopharmacology knows, biochemical reactions in the brain have a tremendous effect on all sorts of bodily functions, including the immune system and the lymph node system. The biochemical reactions which occur in the brain are themselves profoundly influenced by a variety of factors, both "psychological" and "physiological". To argue in favor of a point at which "bodily" illness ends and "mental" illness begins is specious and self-defeating. Unfortunately, the ghost of Descartes is alive and well today, and we can't seem to break free from the shackles he created. Perhaps the "AIDS" epidemic will force us to confront Descartes face-to-face and run him down and give him a good beating. When someone responds to my ideas with "that's crap", or "you need counselling, Darin", the implicit assumption is that non-materialist causes of disease are somehow "not real", or "beyond the realm of scientific debate". I try to remind people that atoms and molecules themselves were "not real" for quite a long time in the history of science, until a group of people began to develop a coherent theory of them. Regardless, there already exists a "scientific" theory of this kind -- it's called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), and it's one of the fastest growing areas of research today. It's producing many more promising results than the intellectually bankrupt "germ theory" of disease, upon which so much money is wasted every year. I suggest you do a websearch on PNI, and see what you come up with. At any rate, I hope this book will run through a long life and provide inspiration for future research and ideas. It provides the most compelling and persuasive explanation for how on earth "people of the late 20th century could possibly believe anything as manifestly preposterous as the now-preaviling AIDS myths." (John Lauritsen) Sooner or later, people will _wake up_, and realize that AIDS is _not_ caused by promiscuity and two fluids containing a virus. And when they wake up, the first book which will help them sort out the human enigma of the "AIDS" phenomenon will be the "AIDS Cult". I trust it won't be the last