John Lauritsen ----- IN MEMORIAM
John Lauritsen was right when so many others were wrong.
In the earliest days of the AIDS panic, he saw that the data showed that drug abuse was the greatest risk factor for AIDS; and that the CDC was getting the statistics wrong by stating homosexual behavior to be the greatest risk [1]. That mis-step by the CDC led to the mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment of untold millions of people, continuing to the present day.
I had been again gathering data on HIV tests around the world, and found this tidbit: The risk of testing HIV positive is a little less with homosexual than with heterosexual activity (61% vs. 73%), whereas drug abuse posed to the greatest risk, 20% vs 3%) [2].
I had wanted to share this belated confirmation with Lauritsen, but my rejected e-mail led me to find that he had died a couple of years ago.
When I was first studying the controversy over whether HIV caused AIDS, several of Lauritsen’s books had impressed because of the careful citing of evidence and sources [3, 4, 5, 6] as well as impeccably clear and even pedantically correct writing.
I had grown up in mid-20th-century Australia where homosexual behavior was regarded as quite beyond the pale, suppressed and oppressed and harassed, by police as well as by vigilantes [7].
As a Jewish refugee and thereby also a distinctly second-class citizen, I rather empathized with other discriminated-against outsiders (like the couple of gay teachers at my high school), but well into the 1980s [8] I could not imagine homosexuality as an “equally valid lifestyle”, to use the then-common terminology. That changed only with my research into HIV/AIDS, and particularly from reading Lauritsen's books, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement [9] and A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love [10] (as well as Andrew Sullivan’s Virtually Normal [11], which made me an advocate of gay marriage).
I also read with interest Lauritsen’s The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein [12] and think he makes a very strong case for his thesis.
I had some correspondence with Lauritsen over the years, and enjoyed brief chats with him at the Rethinking AIDS conferences in 2009 and 2010. On meeting him in person, I had been quite tickled that this independent free-thinker and contrarian seemed the physical embodiment of an Oxford academic don, tweed jacketed and reserved in conversation.
The sheer value of his work calls for substantial recognition on the occasion of his death, but his unpopular stance on HIV/AIDS brought only a rather pro-forma mention at the LGBTQ History Project [13]. More appreciative remembrances have come from “hayekian” [14] and from Celia Farber [15], who had provided invaluable journalist coverage in the early HIV/AIDS days.
Simply put, John Lauritsen was a credit to the human race. He was a man of the highest integrity, and an extraordinarily productive scholar of the first rank.
Long ago a mentor instructed me that grieving the dead is also self-pity.
I am so sorry that we could not have more time with John Lauritsen.
**********************************************************************************************************
[1] “CDC’s tables obscure AIDS-drug connection”, Philadelphia Gay News, 14 February 1985 (and five other papers); reprinted as Chapter I in [2].
[2] James Ward, Marisa Gilles, & Darren Russel, “HIV infection in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”; https://hivmanagement.ashm.org.au/hiv-infection-in-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people/#:~:text=Of%20the%204%2C289%20HIV%20diagnoses,peoples%20(2.8%20per%20100%2C000
[3] The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex, ASKLEPIOS, 1993; ISBN 0–943742–08–0.
[4] Poison by Prescription—the AZT Story, ASKLEPIOS, 1990; ISBN 0–943742–06–4.
[5] Lauritsen & Ian Young (eds.), The AIDS Cult: Essays on the Gay Health Crisis, ASKLEPIOS, 1997; ISBN 0-943742-10-2.
[6] Lauritsen, & Hank Wilson, Death Rush: Poppers and AIDS, Pagan Press, 1986; ISBN 0–943742–05–6.
[7] For a fictional Australian TV series about that based on actual events, see Deep Water; which was the more meaningful for me personally since the action takes place at seaside cliffs near Bondi Beach where I often took recreational walks (and where as a youth I was even once solicited for male-on-male sex).
[8] To Rise Above Principle: The Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean, University of Illinois Press, 1988 (Henry H. Bauer but under the pen-name ‘Josef Martin’); 2nd ed. 2012 with added material, Wipf & Stock,; p. 80, and App. III in 2nd ed.
[9] Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), Times Change Press (Ojai, CA),1995; ISBN 0-87810-041-5.
[10] A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love, Pagan Press, 1998; ISBN 0-943742-11-0.
[11] Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, Knopf, 1995.
[12] The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, Pagan Press, 2007; ISBN 978-0-943742-15-1.
[13] August Bernadicou, “John Lauritsen — The Gay Liberation Front”, https://www.lgbtqhp.org/post/john-lauritsen
[14] “Tribute to John Lauritsen”, https://hayekian.medium.com/tribute-to-john-lauritsen-a54b066918e3
[15] Celia Farber, “Tribute to John Lauritsen, Author of ‘Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story’”, 04/26/22; https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/john-lauritsen-poison-by-prescription-the-azt-story/