The Wisdom of Whores

Elizabeth Pisani has just published an interesting book entitled "The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS ". It was published by Granta Books in May 2008(£ 17.99).

The book is not as many would think the title suggests about whores and what they know and do not know or do, but about the United nations' policy and the successes but also the failures and failures in the thinking behind the agencies actions. It explores the nature of the AIDS mafia that has grown up around the fight to control the spread of this disease.Elizabeth's main thesis is that fighting HIV/AIDS is unlike the struggle against many other threatening diseases because 'its about sex, stupid!'. Actually, her book makes clear that it is actually about 'education, poverty, gender rights and sex and drug injection (and, in China, contaminated blood).' Nevertheless, Alex Rention reviewing the book for the Sunday Times (UK) says: 'this is an important and wise book and it it is not on the bedside table of all UN agency managers soon, they should consider resignation.'

Apparently, Elizabeth herself is a member of what she calls the Aids mafia. She worked during what she refers to as “the excitement and optimism” of the early years of the global Aids response, slipping with worrying ease and no qualifications from journalism into epidemiology and HIV research for the United Nations' only body devoted to one disease alone: UNAids.

This book is to be recommended as a serious read for those concerned with the health downside of the world's unsafe sex life and controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Blondie