AIDS in America

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 23, 2006

Hunter writes that more than one million Americans are infected with HIV, and the infection rate surged between 2002 and 2003. A consultant to UNICEF and other health organizations, Hunter makes two main points in this wide-ranging polemic. The first is that AIDS is no longer confined to marginalized populations; the second is that government policies and the influence of the Christian right are helping to ensure its unnecessarily rapid spread. The book centers on Paige Swanberg, a young single mother from Billings, Mont., who was infected after a brief liaison with a newcomer to town. By the time Hunter encounters her, Swanberg is an AIDS counselor and activist who has learned that her paternal grandfather also died of the disease. "AIDS in the United States is a family disease," Hunter writes, and she uses Swanberg's family her mother, biological father, adoptive father and two sisters to illustrate how the rise in the number of single-parent families, the advent of government-sanctioned abstinence-only sex education and the monopolistic policies of American drug companies have combined to create a recipe for a coming public health disaster. Hunter's ability to render such a large body of information coherent is impressive. At times, she undercuts the wealth of information with too much polemic and unsubstantiated and alarmist statements. 16 pages of b&w illus.