The Wall Street Journal published a remarkable story last week under the headline, “AIDS Fight Is Skewed By Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks.” What risks? Well, as reporters Amanda Bennett and Anita Sharpe explain, “for most heterosexuals, the risk from a single act of sex [is] smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.”
The immensely long article, clearly intended for Pulitzer consideration, begins: “In the summer of 1987, federal health officials made the fateful decision to bombard the public with a terrifying message: Anyone could get AIDS.” It’s not every day, after all, that nine-year-old news makes the front page of a major newspaper.
The article is, to put it mildly, nothing new. In fact, some people knew about it at the time. Michael Fumento published a wildly controversial article in Commentary called “AIDS: Are Heterosexuals at Risk?” — which told exactly the same story the Journal tells now but was rather more timely when he wrote it. In November 1987.
The reason the Journal now splashes this old story across its pages is not that the reporters seem especially scandalized by the decision of the government to lie about AIDS back in 1987 (they sympathetically portray that act as a noble lie necessary to increase federal funding for AIDS research), but that they are scandalized by the consequences of the lie, as spelled out in the article’s subhead: “Most Heterosexuals Face Scant Peril but Receive Large Portion of Funds: Less Goes to Gays, Addicts.”
Fumento told this story with greater moral clarity and at a time when it might have done enormous good. As he put it in 1987: “Every dollar spent, every commercial made, every health warning released, that does not specify promiscuous anal intercourse and needle-sharing as the overwhelming risk factors in the transmission of AIDS is a lie, a waste of funds and energy, and a cruel diversion.” Where was the Journal then? Spooked by the AIDS lobby, no doubt.
