Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Free subscription) | 06/28/2008
A moment with Elizabeth Pisani, epidemiologist and author of "Wisdom of Whores," whose point is that the international battle against AIDS is off-track.
The Bookseller to the Stars (Free subscription) | 06/02/2008
One of the most daring and socially-essential books of this year is ‘The Wisdom of Whores’ by Elizabeth Pisani, of which I was lucky enough to attend her launch recently . In her book, she talks about sex in a wonderfully frank and exciting way, not unlike a Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City monologue which is so wholeheartedly refreshing in the same way from...
Philadelphia Inquirer (Free subscription) | 06/29/2008
The Wisdom of WhoresBureaucrats, Brothelsand the Business of AIDSBy Elizabeth PisaniW.W. Norton. 372 pp. $29.95Why don't we know more about the world'Here's a simple answer: Wonderful writers aren't where they should be.That is, in banks, hospitals, factories, amusement parks, hair salons, racetracks, car washes, delicatessens - explaining their peculiar institutions to the rest of us.Most...
Seth's blog (Free subscription) | 06/21/2008
At a bookstore reading, I learned that Elizabeth Pisani wrote The Wisdom of Whores — about doing HIV epidemiology among sex workers — because she wanted to have more of an effect on HIV prevention programs. Scientific papers didn’t have much effect unless a journalist wrote about them. Journalists, she found, tended to focus on [...]
Tim Worstall (Free subscription) | 06/16/2008
Elizabeth Pisani has a piece today that roughly outlines where we are with AIDS today. There’s two entirely different epidemics: the African one, which is indeed largely heterosexual, and the one everywhere else, which is: The second epidemic covers the rest of the globe. Nine out of ten humans (and three in ten of those infected with [...]
Marginal Revolution (Free subscription) | 06/19/2008
... itself, might well die out along with it. In The Wisdom of Whores (see also my earlier post ) Elizabeth Pisani says that such a country exists, it's Thailand, and the results of more sex were safer sex - exactly as Landsburg argued. Here's Pisani's story: Thailand used to fit the the classic 'virtuous girls, philandering boys' model. At the start of the 1990s, 57 percent of...
The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 06/14/2008
Michael Bywater reviews The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani
Crunchy Con (Free subscription) | 06/13/2008
More on the way political correctness has corrupted the world's fight against AIDS. Here's a review of Elizabeth Pisani's new book "The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS," which is about how the worldwide AIDS bureaucracy...
A Random Walk (Free subscription) | 06/09/2008
Here is an excellent post from Marginal Revolution on the perils of random sampling. Even when you think you've done it, you might have missed something. The Wisdom of Whores As a teenager Elizabeth Pisani discovered that she liked sneaking into the "girlie bars" of Hong Kong and talking to the hookers and the johns. Ordinarily one wouldn't expect such peculiar hobbies to pay off in a...
Marginal Revolution (Free subscription) | 06/09/2008
As a teenager Elizabeth Pisani discovered that she liked sneaking into the "girlie bars" of Hong Kong and talking to the hookers and the johns. Ordinarily one wouldn't expect such peculiar hobbies to pay off in a dazzling career. But...
Phawker (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
... she played two identical half-sisters — one of them good, one of them evil. ALSO, Epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani has worked on the front lines of HIV/AIDS research for more than a decade, talking to sex workers, drug users, health officials and bureaucrats alike in an effort to determine why 40 million people are living with HIV — and what can be done to curb the epidemic. Pisani’s...
Globalisation Institute Blog (Free subscription) | 06/02/2008
Something we perhaps don't do enough of around here: recommend books for you. So here is one such recommendation, The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani. No, despite its title it's not about bringing things learnt commercially into your own boudoir, it's an examination of the world of bureaucrats, brothels and the business of AIDS by an insider. An insider to the bureaucracy I hope...
Geoff Coupe's Blog (Free subscription) | 05/28/2008
Earlier this month, I pointed to a good interview with Elizabeth Pisani , who has just published a book on HIV and the AIDS prevention industry. Now I see that she has an excellent article on the subject in this month's Prospect magazine. Worth reading, and she repeats her sobering message that: ...living with HIV is not all abseiling down canyons at sunset. It's about going to the clinic...
First Drafts (Free subscription) | 05/27/2008
In her essay for Prospect this month, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani tells the story of the changing relationship between HIV and Aids in Britain's gay community, and the changing behaviours associated with it. Today, with new antiretroviral treatments available on the NHS, infection with the HIV virus is not the death-sentence it was even a decade ago. [...]
The First Post (Free subscription) | 05/22/2008
on an honest and funny look at the self-righteous AIDS industryFrom the very moment it was first recognised, the AIDS epidemic produced a fluttering in many dovecotes. Puritans saw it as God's vengeance upon the wicked; others claimed, no more plausibly, that the disease organism was not prejudiced and that everyone was equally at risk.Elizabeth Pisani is a talented woman who speaks both...
