“Farber a lucid and courageous witness to the power-play behind the first ‘scamdemic,’ . . . [Her] work is journalism at its best—solid, lucid, and humane, attacking wrongs that few dare touch, and thereby helping right them.”—Mark Crispin Miller, bestselling author and professor of media studies at NYUOn April 23, 1984, in a packed press conference room in Washington, DC, the secretary of health and human services declared, “The probable ca...

On April 23, 1984, in a packed press conference room in Washington, DC, the secretary of health and human services declared “The probable cause of AIDS has been found.” By the next day, “probable” had fallen away, and the novel retrovirus later named HIV became forever lodged in global consciousness as “the AIDS virus.”Celia Farber, then an intrepid young reporter for SPIN magazine, was the only journalist to question the official narrative and dig into the science of AIDS...