Considering his well-known name, it is a little, but only a little, surprising that no one from the media ever noticed it, and out of curiosity at least telephoned to find out what was up with this odd bit of endorsement. [2] Lee was understandably concerned about this eventuality when I asked him to please contribute something (for personal reasons having nothing to do with my imagining his name could be used to sell books -- all, I am holding my sides laughing, profits of which go to the The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas in any case). But I assured him that the chance of Sports Illustrated calling was almost as slim as contracting HIV [3] from a random sexual encounter with the boys of the Castro of San Francisco or the girls in the hotels of the Ikeja of Lagos, and we even jokingly thought of some artful dodges he might employ in the event of the highly unlikely inquiry ever materializing.
But once again I was optimistic in my estimation of the attention popular media pay to the "HIV/AIDS debate", and the number of inquiries he has received in the 16 months since his "customer review" appeared is exactly the number of AIDS patients cured since the "new disease and its cause" was announced by the US government 26 years ago, i.e. zero.
Very recently, however, Lee decided, for reasons explained below, to allow me to interview him about HIV/AIDS and Africa.
Harvey Bialy: The first question in
anyone�s mind who has even glanced at my
book online is "did you actually read this?"
Lee Evans: (Laughing). I read it the
same way you read
Frank Murphy�s new
biography
of me when we asked you to look at the
manuscript. You skimmed the technical parts
about hundredths of a second 100 meter
splits, and leans and redirecting vertical
energy into horizontal movement, etc., and
just read the story. And just like Frank�s
book did for you, your book brought back a
lot of memories for me, and also reminded me
the struggles of the 60s are not over even
though there are more black millionaires.
HB: Why did you decide that now was
the time to go more public (anticipating
that this website will be visited more
frequently than the Amazon listing for my
book)?
LE: I don�t know exactly. Maybe it�s
because over the past couple of years I�ve
become more cynical about a lot of things.
(Laughing) Getting old I guess. But
seriously, the more I see what is going on
in Washington and with the foreign policy of
the United States, the more I�m reminded of
the ways the government lied about Viet Nam
and the way it messed with Black people,
including me (laughing again), during those
times. The whole picture fits so well with
what you have been telling me about AIDS
since "the Motherland is dying from too much
sex" became a gold record song, I got angry
enough to want to say something about racial
politics in this country again after hoping
for 35 years something might really change.
And then I read the stories of that NIH
doctor
Fishbein,
and a few days ago Bush scared the hell out
of me when he said in his sorry State of the
Union speech that he wanted a new federal
effort to make sure millions more African
Americans were tested for HIV!
[4]
So I decided the next time you asked me to
go public I would.
HB: What first made you suspicious of
mainstream African AIDS reporting?
LE: I have been all over Africa for
almost 30 years and when I first heard there
was a new sexually transmitted disease
epidemic I was alarmed and began looking for
what the television said was everywhere. All
I ever saw was more and more of the same
diseases we saw in 1975, and it was obvious
the increase was because of the worsening
living conditions, and the pennies instead
of dollars governments were spending on
health care. Sure, I have seen TB wards at
hospitals and lots of misery, but nobody
except the media and the people living off
AIDS money ever called that AIDS. And isn�t
it true that except for South Africa no
country uses an "HIV
test"
before it names some old disease AIDS? And
what�s all this about an epidemic? Even
before you showed me the
real numbers,
I knew nothing had happened in the United
States after 20 years of
"sexually-transmitted" HIV. And as far as I
remember, AIDS was discovered here in the
"most sex and number one-loving country in
the world". And then they decided it must
have come from Africa.
click here for part 2
reprinted with permission from
AIDS WIKI,
copyright by Harvey Bialy, used with
permission.
