Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 22:50:53 -0500
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: "Save The AIDS Book" Legal Defense Fund
From: "true paranoia..reads" <orgone@shore.net>
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

This is the latest from alt.conspiracy  regarding the AIDS book that is the
subject of a federal court case.
 - David Huisken


"Save The AIDS Book" Legal Defense Fund
4141 Ball Rd., #157
Cypress, CA 90630

Contact:  Joel Schwartz
phone/fax: (805) 681-9988
email respnses: AIDSCENTRL@aol.com

January 7, 1996
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FEDERAL BOOK BAN BECOMES PERMANENT
Judge orders destruction of all copies of controversial AIDS book

In a move certain to generate heated legal debate, Judge John E. Sprizzo
overstepped the bounds of his own court's verdict and ordered author Bryan
J. Ellison to destroy all copies of his book, Why We Will Never Win the
War on AIDS.

This latest decision follows a ban already placed by Judge Sprizzo on the
book at the end of November, forbidding Ellison or anyone else from
distributing the book anywhere in the United States or Canada - even for
free.  Sprizzo's decision concluded a lawsuit filed against Ellison by
Regnery Publishing of Washington, DC, in which Regnery sought to enforce a
long-dead contract between Ellison and another publisher who had refused
to publish the book.  Regnery bought the terminated contract and insisted
that Ellison stop publishing the book, even though Regnery himself also
refused to publish it.  Overriding all protests by the defense attorney
that the judge was violating Federal law, Sprizzo forced through a verdict
against Ellison's book.

But Sprizzo's newly revised decision - ordering that all copies of the
book be destroyed - reaches far beyond the original verdict, which merely
revived the dead contract for publishing rights in the United States and
Canada.  Even under that contract, Ellison still retains rights to print
the book and sell it throughout the rest of the world.  Sprizzo's new
order, signed on December 29, will now enforce a claim that even the
plaintiff never made, effectively banning the book worldwide.

Regnery Publishing, meanwhile, is sitting on the newly seized rights and
is refusing to publish Ellison's book at all.  Officially, Regnery has
repeatedly claimed he will publish a rewritten form of the book.  But he
has missed all his previous deadlines of May, September, and October 1995,
as well as January 1996, thus fulfilling Ellison's prediction that Regnery
will never release the book.  Furthermore, Regnery has radically rewritten
the book without allowing Ellison to review the massive changes.

"Even if Regnery eventually does release some version of the book, it will
have been rewritten to eliminate all the hard-hitting information," said
Ellison.  "The Federal government does not want that embarrassing
information to reach the general public."

The book documents a growing controversy in the inner corridors of
biomedical research, in which hundreds of prestigious scientists now
believe that the Federal government may have blamed the AIDS epidemic on
the wrong cause in 1984.  This would mean that some forty billion dollars
of taxpayers' money has been spent chasing a harmless virus, while
hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims have been given the wrong medical
treatments and have died needlessly.  Not surprisingly, Federal officials
in charge of the War on AIDS have reacted furiously, ordering scientists
not to mention this debate publicly and threatening reporters with
sanctions if news stories cover the scientific dissenters.  Recently,
Nobel laureates and top researchers at Harvard, Yale, and other major
institutions have joined the dissenters, serving only to anger Federal
officials more than ever.

Ellison, who has done AIDS research and is one of the dissenters, wrote
his book to bypass the blockade of media censorship.  Some 20,000 copies
of the book were distributed in the United States since late 1994, drawing
nationwide attention to the controversy.

But why would Regnery, who runs a private company, spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars in Federal court to stop the book?  Ellison believes
this may be connected to the fact that Regnery himself spent years as a
top official in the U.S. Justice Department, and may have been doing the
government a favor.  Regnery's top attorney is also a former Justice
Department official, as is Judge Sprizzo, who manifested extreme hostility
to Ellison throughout the lawsuit, and who tried to dismiss Ellison's
attorney as part of a maneuver to force Ellison to defend himself.

Ellison's attorney, who defended the book pro bono as a free speech case,
is now preparing an appeal.

The lawsuit was held in Federal court in the Southern District of New
York.  The case number is 95 Civ. 0157 (JES).
# # #




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