The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS

by Elizabeth Pisani

Overview

A flame-throwing epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes (dismal), ideologies (vicious), and hopes (realistic) of international AIDS prevention.

When people ask Elizabeth Pisani what she does for a living, she says, "sex and drugs." As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, she's been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit and fierce honesty, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most—drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns.Pisani chats with flamboyant Indonesian transsexuals about their boob jobs and watches Chinese streetwalkers turn away clients because their SUVs aren't nice enough. With verve and clarity, she shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. "Exhibit A": the 45 billion taxpayer dollars the Bush administration is committing to international AIDS programs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393068900
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/17/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	987,081
File size:	784 KB

About the Author

Elizabeth Pisani has lived in Indonesia at various times over the past twenty-five years, originally as a journalist and later as an HIV epidemiologist. The author of The Wisdom of Whores and Indonesia Etc., she is based in London.

Editorial Reviews

"The book will make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about HIV/AIDS."

Foreign Policy - Katie Hunter

"This is an utterly fascinating book. . . . Elizabeth Pisani writes with enormous verve and acerbity, her prose alive with anecdote and metaphor. . . . The Wisdom of Whores is a great read."

Stephen Lewis