IRMA pal Elizabeth Pisani guest stars on Feast of Fun

IRMA galpal Elizabeth Pisani was in Chicago for a month-long gig at DePaul University - and we were delighted to introduce her to the Feast of Fun podcast boys when we ran into them at Ping Pong - one of our fav restaurants. They demanded Elizabeth come on their show STAT to chat up her book "The Wisdom of Whores." So she did, and threw in plenty of her trademark unvarnished analysis of HIV prevention and AIDS Inc. - and so much more.

Listen up.

Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, drugs and HIV -- let's get rational - via TED

Read more about Elizabeth on this blog...

What are the Sacred Cows of HIV Prevention?

A Conversation with Elizabeth Pisani

Text from today's Caucus newsletter (Aug 6 insert), distributed at AIDS 2008

By Jennifer Johnson, Population Action International

"We need to be clear that this is the best researched disease in history. We know what to do to prevent HIV infection, but we’re not drawing a straight line between what we know and what we do," stated Elizabeth Pisani, author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS.

This session [Monday, August 4] sponsored by the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention and the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, was a frank discussion among advocates, framed around Pisani’s idea of the "sacred cows of HIV" (an analogy taken from drivers in India swerving to avoid cows in the road). What are the "sacred cows" standing in the way of progress in the fight against AIDS?

Religious groups that advocate for policy based in ideology rather than evidence may be one. Or the AIDS industry itself, which has framed AIDS as "everybody’s problem" in order to draw attention and funding, rather than focusing attention on the groups most at risk. The history of HIV/AIDS activism may be to blame, creating anti-testing and pro-treatment biases rather than a focus on prevention. There is also the assumption that people will make rational decisions about their health (e.g., using condoms and clean needles), when the evidence is that people are not rational about sex and drugs.

The group also discussed the need to strengthen health systems in general. Are poverty reduction, food security and women’s empowerment issues also AIDS issues or should they be kept separate? As Pisani stated, "Why do we need HIV to fight against sexual violence?" Some liked the idea of using HIV as a catalyst for ensuring these basic human rights, but others thought the funda-mentals of HIV prevention should be the focus.

This discussion is only one of many that are necessary to topple our "sacred cows" and promote HIV prevention based in scientific evidence.

[more photos from this event, and the rest of AIDS 2008, will be posted in a complete set upon IRMA's triumphant return to HQ]

Brit Chicks I Fancy - live from Mexico City

IRMA's Jim Pickett, coming to you live from Mexico City, at AIDS 2008.

Read his post on the aforementioned chicks aqui... - on the Positively Aware blog. One, btw, is a rather famous female singer, right out of a sweet dream.

[pictured above, Pickett and one of the chicks (at left) with two other very cool lasses, at the TGI Fridays of Mexico -Sanborn's - having a cerveza and some chilequiles - and scheming.)

Check out the conference community blog - some great stuff there.

JOIN US - A Conversation with Author Elizabeth Pisani in Mexico City

Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention

and

International Rectal Microbicide Advocates



cordially invite you to join us
on the occasion of the
XVII International AIDS Conference for

A Conversation with Author
Elizabeth Pisani

Monday, August 4, 2008,
6:30-8:00 pm
at the Hotel Camino Real Mexico in the Guanajuato Room. The Hotel Camino Real is located in the Polanco area of Mexico City on Mariano Escobado Avenue.

This is a closed session and only members and partners of the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention, the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, and San Francisco AIDS Foundation will be allowed to attend. This invitation is non-transferrable. Contact Jim Pickett if you have questions.

About the book

Writer-scientist Elizabeth Pisani’s, "The Wisdom of Whores – Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS” is a kumbaya-free must read for anyone in the HIV/AIDS field. The book openly challenges you to re-examine your turf in “AIDS.inc," wherever your spot on the trough may be, and seriously question the billions of dollars being spent in the service of… what, exactly? Pisani’s take is that prevention, specifically prevention among gay men, injection drug users, and sex workers, is horribly neglected due to the questionable global strategy of making AIDS “everyone’s problem.” This generalization doesn’t hold true in most of the world, she says, and governments and funders have used it to spend their largesse among those least at risk, conveniently ignoring the politically unpopular messiness of sex, gay sex and drugs. Pisani's blunt account spares no one and offers all of us a chance to reflect on the current state of funding priorities for HIV prevention. For more information about Elizabeth Pisani and her book, please visit, her website.

The Heat of the Moment

Just yesterday, a couple of IRMA members were once again talking/ranting about the disconnect in microbicde research between the protocols of the scientific endeavor and the ways in which PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE SEX.

While we have to answer certain questions in microbicide studies, and to determine the answers we have to design the studies in very structured ways - we have yet to get a handle on the "messiness of sex" - and that most of us do not follow strict step-by-step instructions (first put it there, then do a little of this, then...) when we are getting busy...

The Wisdom of Whores has a great post on a related topic:

I’ve been known to take the piss out of scientists who think people make decisions about sex the way they make decisions about what stocks to invest in, nice and rationally. My published references even include “Sex is fun, remember?”. In my experience, a hard-on (or its female equivalent, a wide-on) tends to disrupt rational decision-making. And I’ve just found a scientific paper that proves it.

In The Heat of the Moment (pdf), scientists Dan Ariely and George Lowenstein asked college boys to say what they would do to get laid. Would they buy a girl a nice dinner? Would they consider sleeping with a woman over 40 (!!) And what would they do to stay safe? Would they use a condom even if the girl might change her mind while they went to get one? (Please! Don’t they know what watch pockets are for?) Using a one-handed keypad the boys answered the on-screen questions twice. One time flaccid, another time “in a state of arousal”. Yes, the boys were paid US$ 10 to wank while they answered questions — the “arousal” round of questions was accompanied by on-screen porn.

Read the rest of her post - Paid to pleasure yourself: nice work if one can get it dept

Stephen Lewis on Elizabeth Pisani

From the Globe and Mail: The former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa reviews The Wisdom of Whores. In typical Stephen Lewis fashion, it makes for a fascinating read!

To learn more about what he agrees with, what he criticises, and his own editorial comments on the responses in Africa and among "high-risk" populations, harm reduction, resources, abstinence, the Bush administration, testing and human rights, treatment vs prevention arguments, poverty and development lenses, gender inequality, the absence of female sexual autonomy and the UN apparatus... read the full review!

"The Wisdom of Whores ends with the desperate question: "What the hell difference are we making anyway?" I ask myself that 10 times a day. The sad, sad truth about the Pisani book is that the rude language and controversial nostrums will allow it to be dismissed by policy makers at all levels. But it should be mandatory, not voluntary, reading: Pisani is lucid, colourful, insightful and impatient. In her last chapter, she says quite plainly that we know what to do and we're just not doing it. She's right. The worst thing that's happened to AIDS is that the same tired, intellectually ossified bureaucrats in international aid agencies, in many governments, in multilateral financial vehicles and above all in the United Nations, are calling the shots.

Elizabeth Pisani is a far straighter shooter than most of them put together."

Read the rest... and don't forget about the event at the International AIDS conference in Mexico that includes a conversation between IRMA and Ms. Pisani!

A Conversation with Author Elizabeth Pisani in Mexico City

[**NEW! Read this interview with Pisani on BlogCritics Magazine]

Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention

International Rectal Microbicide Advocates

and
San Francisco AIDS Foundation

cordially invite you to join us
on the occasion of the
XVII International AIDS Conference for

A Conversation with Author
Elizabeth Pisani

Monday, August 4, 2008,
6:30-8:00 pm
at the Hotel Camino Real Mexico in the Guanajuato Room. The Hotel Camino Real is located in the Polanco area of Mexico City on Mariano Escobado Avenue.

This is a closed session and only members and partners of the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention, the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, and San Francisco AIDS Foundation will be allowed to attend. This invitation is non-transferrable.

About the book

Writer-scientist Elizabeth Pisani’s, "The Wisdom of Whores – Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS” is a kumbaya-free must read for anyone in the HIV/AIDS field. The book openly challenges you to re-examine your turf in “AIDS.inc," wherever your spot on the trough may be, and seriously question the billions of dollars being spent in the service of… what, exactly? Pisani’s take is that prevention, specifically prevention among gay men, injection drug users, and sex workers, is horribly neglected due to the questionable global strategy of making AIDS “everyone’s problem.” This generalization doesn’t hold true in most of the world, she says, and governments and funders have used it to spend their largesse among those least at risk, conveniently ignoring the politically unpopular messiness of sex, gay sex and drugs. Pisani's blunt account spares no one and offers all of us a chance to reflect on the current state of funding priorities for HIV prevention. For more information about Elizabeth Pisani and her book, please visit, her website.