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by: Elizabeth Pisani  List Price: $25.95 Amazon.com's Price: $17.13 You Save: $8.82 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 614.599392 EAN: 9780393066623 ISBN: 0393066622 Label: W. W. Norton Manufacturer: W. W. Norton Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 288 Publication Date: June 02, 2008 Publisher: W. W. Norton Studio: W. W. Norton Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: A flame-throwing epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes (dismal), ideologies (vicious), and hopes (realistic) of international AIDS prevention. When people ask Elizabeth Pisani what she does for a living, she says, "sex and drugs." As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, she's been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit and fierce honesty, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most—drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns. Pisani chats with flamboyant Indonesian transsexuals about their boob jobs and watches Chinese streetwalkers turn away clients because their SUVs aren't nice enough. With verve and clarity, she shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. "Exhibit A": the 45 billion taxpayer dollars the Bush administration is committing to international AIDS programs. 12 illustrations. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Funny & InterestingVery funny, very well written book on kind of a dry subject! Definitely worth reading, because as the quote goes: Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. Rating: - books don't get better than thisI read a lot, on a wide variety of topics. If it has words on it, I'll try to read it, even if I _don't_ know the language, I'll try to decipher it. But some books are much more rewarding than others, and this is one of the most rewarding books I've ever read. The other reviews cover the topic well: she's a great writer, a person who really cares about people and not just people who are like her, a scientist who can understand numbers and make them make sense to others. She has a wide ... Read More Rating: - Great science meets great journalismFor sheer accuracy of synopsis, maybe "The Wisdom of Whores"'s subtitle ought to be "Practical Epidemiology, What We Know About Solving the AIDS Crisis, and How the Politics of International Aid Complicate Matters." Though Pisani probably wants to sell a copy or two. This is one of the few books I've read that actually lives up to its jacket blurbs. One author describes it as not only a work of science, but also a page-turner. And indeed it is. Pisani holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology, and ... Read More Rating: - Genuinely enjoy getting the facts straightI am seldom found without at least one book close at hand, and end up trying to give books away in order to keep my shelves from collapsing. But I'm not ready to give this one away, I intend to read it again in a while. What I might do, however, is to order a few extra copies and have them delivered to people I know. Why just this one? Because it is one of those books that you come across once in a while, that works on more than one level. It is a book that keeps me turning the pages, with the energy ... Read More Rating: - A Must-Read Elizabeth Pisani's The Wisdom of Whores - Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS is a great book (along with a great website). Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist with years of experience working on HIV/AIDS (or sex and drugs, as she puts, which sounds a lot, well, sexier) at a variety of agencies, including UNAIDS. The book is the story of her frustrations at the way the international community, national governments, NGOS and AIDS activists have dealt with the epidemics, as well as her hopes ... Read More 
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