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Kalichman, Seth. (2009). Denying AIDS: Conspiracy theories, Pseudoscience and Human Tragedy. New York: Copernicus Books, Springer Science Imprint, pp.205, ISBN-9780387794754.
Seth Kalichman's timely book exposes the destructive shadow of AIDS denialism in the manifest guises of pseudoscience and politics with candour and ludicidity. The homophobia and racism implicit in such denialist positions are unmasked in conjunction with obfuscation of such distinctions as those between necessary and sufficient conditions in determining the causality of HIV/AIDS. Like holocaust deniers, those who create doubt about whether HIV causes AIDS can be held accountable for much of the morbidity and mortality, especially in the developing world. As an account of the history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and for consciousness raising, the book is an important contribution. Especially perhaps for those scientists and policy makers whose denial still results in the wish-fulfilling fantasy that HIV as one of the fasting evolving of all organisms is no longer a globally salient threat. As Kalichman himself acknowledges in his book, the adaptive mutation of HIV, together with mutant strains of tuberculosis, is a menace to the lives of millions of people. The analogy between holocaust and AIDS denial seems to me to be a particularly valid one.
Kalichman clearly distinguishes between defensive denial of traumatic realities such as HIV seropositive status and mortality which can be construed as a short term coping strategy which is maladaptive in the long run and denialism. As a...