From adenovirus to Ziti fever, A Field Guide to Germs presents “the top-ranked terms and germs (in prevalence, or power, or worry factor, or even literary interest)… not with the quack promise of self-diagnosis, but with the absolute certainty that a little knowledge is always better than zip.” Written with a light touch and with the intelligent layperson in mind, A Field Guide to Germs details the significant symptoms, historical significance and social impact of some 70-plus viruses, bacterium or other sources of contagion. While handy as a reference book, this also offers many wonderful factoids, such as: measles is not carried by any other animal and it needs a human population of over 300,000 to provide a sustaining supply of virgin bodies so that it will not die out. Or, doctors in the time of plague wore beaked masks filled with pleasant-smelling whatnot to mask the stench of decay. Or, the French term for gonorrhea as far back as the 12th century was chaude pisse, which translates literally as “hot piss.” Complete with period illustrations, A Field Guide to Germs offers hours of entertainment. JAT

Publisher: Anchor
Paperback: 196 pages
Illustrated

“According to Dr. Robert Strecker and other scientists, the AIDS virus is a man-made, genetically engineered virus that was deliberately or accidentally introduced into selected populations as part of a secret scientific germ-warfare experiment. A massive coverup by the scientific establishment and the government has kept this information from the American people. Strecker’s horrifying assertions of an AIDS conspiracy led the author to research little-known scientific facts about the new epidemic, particularly the relationship between AIDS, animal cancer virus experimentation and genetic bio-engineering of viruses designed to destroy the immune system.”

Publisher: Aries Rising
Paperback: 240 pages

“A sizzling, behind-the-scenes tour of laboratories, newsrooms and even the White House to expose the real killers behind the disease… Investigative reporter Rappoport uncovers the shocking truth about AIDS: Thousands are dying needlessly as the medical world and media pull off the biggest scandal of our time—all for the love of power and money.”

Publisher: Human Energy
Paperback: 345 pages
Illustrated

The most complete investigation to date on the biowarfare aspect of ready-made diseases. Examines the motivations of Henry Kissinger, Nelson and Laurence Rockefeller, the U.N. and the WHO in an insane plan to depopulate the Earth with ethno-specific diseases. Chapters include: “The World Health Organization Theory of AIDS”; “Cold War, Biological Weapons, and World Health”; “Interview With Dr. Robert Strecker”; “African Foreign Policy and Population Control”; “Henry Kissinger’s New World Order”; “Silent Coup in American Intelligence”; “The CIA/Detrick Operation”; “MK-Ultra and CIA Human Experimentation”; “The Nazi Roots of American Intelligence”; “The CIA in Africa”; “The Man-Made Origin of Marburg and Ebola.” Massively referenced, this book will recast the entire AIDS debate. FLA

Publisher: Tetrahedron
Hardback: 545 pages
Illustrated

History-making outbreaks of bubonic plague, smallpox, rubella, influenza, malaria, conjunctivitis, scarlet fever, cholera and diphtheria. Nature’s weapons of mass destruction, sneaking out from under Death’s door to bring humanity down. GR

Publisher: Facts on File
Hardback: 432 pages

Duesberg is one of the world’s leading microbiologists, a pioneer in the discovery of the HIV family of viruses. He begins his study by historically analyzing diseases that were thought to be caused by a virus but were not, such as SMON, a disease that struck Japan in the 1950s and was caused by medicine given to patients as treatment. Or scurvy, which was fought as a viral disease until it was discovered to be caused by dietary deficiencies. He cites these examples in order to back up his theory that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
This book goes beyond Michel Foucault’s wildest fantasies. Duesberg reevaluates the clinical histories of the first five people who died of AIDS-related complications, in 1980, only to find our that all of them were heavy users of inhalant nitrates (or “poppers”), once used heavily in the gay community. According to Duesberg, these are highly toxic and can cause Kaposi’s sarcoma within a short period of time. Duesberg also observes that there is a correlation between the people who actually die of AIDS and their history of drug use, indicating that drug abuse may be the primary reason for the immunological system’s breakdown. So, according to Duesberg, Foucault probably didn’t die because he was infected by the HIV retrovirus but because he had been attending some wild Parisian parties.
Another controversial point made by Duesberg is the “latency period” concept. It is an accepted fact that diseases caused by a virus like polio and smallpox have an immediate effect on the organism. He argues that a “latency period” of years of duration was invented when scientists were convinced that leukemia was a viral disease and the only way they could justify the connection between it and cancer was by expanding the length of the “latency period” until it reached 40 years. The author sees this is as a baroque attempt to save the theoretical framework in spite of the fact-based reality of the disease.
Duesberg questions the efficacy of AZT, ddl and ddC, which he shows to be very toxic. He claims that the cure causes the disease, calling it “AIDS by prescription.” He brings forward many cases, including that of Magic Johnson, who stopped the AZT treatment and is still alive, and that of Arthur Ashe who didn’t stop the treatment and who died shortly thereafter. AF

Publisher: Regnery
Hardback: 722 pages

“The Black Death came to England in 1348, and for over three centuries bubonic plague remained a continual and threatening presence in the everyday life (and death) of the country… Examines what it was like to live with the plague at all levels of society,” from village priest to abbot, from laborer to nobleman. Whole towns were wiped out, churches half built, never finished. The Dance of Death eventually joined the Gospel in stained-glass displays, and merchants were buried under memorial cadavers carved in stone, calling for friends’ compassion in mourning their hideous death. Everywhere it was a culture invaded by shrouds, skulls and the stench of death, until the industry of death itself became a “potent instrument of change.” GR

Publisher: University of Toronto
Paperback: 262 pages
Illustrated

Why was a prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Mary Sherman, involved in an underground medical laboratory with a violent political extremist, David Ferrie? Is there actually a connection between the JFK assassination and AIDS? Ferrie was working on an alleged cancer cure; Sherman was murdered and her body set on fire, and her records are missing to this day. Haslam has raised some intriguing questions. FLA

Publisher: Flatland
Paperback: 258 pages
Illustrated

Within six months of the first outbreak in the late ‘70s, the condition that came to be known as AIDS/HIV had become an epidemic in New York, with mysterious, horrific deaths also being tallied in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Queer Blood, Cantwell still believes it ain’t no monkey virus!
Cantwell gives solid evidence that the experimental gay-hepatitis vaccines in N.Y. and the ambitious smallpox vaccine program implemented by the World Health Organization in the ‘60s and ‘70s can be directly linked to AIDS; almost 100 million blacks were injected in Central Africa alone. Was a dormant virus awakened, or were some batches of the vaccine contaminated? What about the polio vaccines of the ‘60s, some of which were contaminated by a simian virus called SV 40? Why are there an AIDS hetero virus in Africa and a homo virus in the U.S.? The major media are controlled by big business; some conspiratologists believe that the media’s suppression of the AIDS biowarfare idea makes it even more credible. Government propaganda has eradicated any sympathy for homosexual AIDS victims; the Christian fundamentalist view that the disease is some kind of retribution for their evil ways boggles the mind when one learns that 75 percent of the world’s current AIDS cases are hetero. By 1993 300 people were dying each day from AIDS. Why aren’t people asking more questions? Cantwell asks, and why are alternative and holistic methods suppressed in favor of magic pills and vaccine research? SK

Publisher: Aries Rising
Paperback: 159 pages

“The essays in this collection paint a portrait of the secret malady; public and private responses to the epidemic; changing attitudes toward venereal disease; and its role in making sex a taboo subject, in enforcing class and racial distinctions and in raising the level of misogyny.”

Publisher: Univ. Press of Kentucky
Paperback: 304 pages
Illustrated