If a latex condom and lube are all that you need to prevent the transmission of HIV, why have millions died from that epidemic over the last two decades? And why are they still dying? If you thought that the destructive effect of US Christian Right 'abstinence' propaganda and junk science was only restricted to the English speaking world, then you may be shocked when you read this book. Predictably, under the Bush administration, abstinence junk science, ideology and propaganda have taken on a new lease of life, both within and outside the United States. Gill takes us to Central Africa, Brazil, South Africa and the United States to find out why. In the United States, AIDS policy has been a perennial battleground between pragmatists like C.Everett Koop (Reagan's former Surgeon General), who didn't let ideology get in the way of recommending the need for sex education and condom provision,and ideologues like anti-feminist conservative Catholic Phyllis Schlafly,or neanderthals like former Californian Republican Congressman William Dannemeyer, who thought all HIV+ people in the United States should be 'wiped out.' Unfortunately, in the United States, accurate comprehensive sexuality education has been replaced by Christian Right 'abstinence only' junk science and propaganda. Often, this material is peddled by fundamentalist ideologues with no medical qualifications in areas like epidemiology, public or reproductive and sexual health. Unfortunately, too, this drivel is being exported to Central Africa, with disastrous consequences for management of the HIV epidemic. Initially, in Uganda, massive condom provision slowed the spread of the epidemic, until the interference of fundamentalist First Lady Janet Museveni, and Baptist minister Peter Ssempa. Their interference stopped Population Services International from distributing condoms and safe sex information to younger Ugandans, due to US fundamentalist abstinence propagandising. There is also massive rorting of the international AIDS 'prevention' effort going on. When PSI was deprived of AIDS funding contracts, Mrs Museveni's fundamentalist "Uganda Youth Forum" was one of the religious groups that got financing from Washington instead. Much the same happened in Zambia, in the case of ex-President Frederick Chilumba, whose Assemblies of God connections led him to advocate fundamentalist ideologies. In both countries, public health experts are at odds with US abstinence junk science and anti-condom propaganda, despite tragedies like the one that has visited the family of former Zambian President Dr Kenneth Kaunda. Like his South African compatriot, Nelson Mandela, Dr Kaunda lost a son to the epidemic, as well as nieces and even grandchildren. In South Africa, the culprit isn't fundamentalist junk science, but the discredited fringe theories about the origins and treatment of the HIV epidemic spread by the likes of Peter Duesberg. Unfortunately, Thabo Mbeki, the current South African President, has clashed repeatedly with Nelson Mandela, as well as mainstream South African public health authorities, and tried to obstruct AZT and other medication for PLWAs. Still, there is hope. In the case of Brazil and the UK's Cafod (a Catholic development agency), courageous dissident Catholics are prepared to put their pastoral responsibilities toward the poor and oppressed above the dictates of their church hierarchy, despite fuming from national Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican. Brazil even fought the United States over its pragmatic attitudes toward sex workers, and provided inexpensive HIV/AIDS medication to its PLWAs- including Kaletra. Not for the first time, the US Christian Right has blood on its hands, and that of those most vulnerable to its malignant ideology and propaganda. Recommended: Body Count: How They Turned AIDS into A Catastrophe Peter Gill Profile, London, 2006. Craig Young - 4th September 2006