Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, Drugs and HIV -- Let's Get Rational

Armed with bracing logic, wit and her "public-health nerd" glasses, Elizabeth Pisani reveals the myriad of inconsistencies in today's political systems that prevent our dollars from effectively fighting the spread of HIV. Her research with at-risk populations -- from junkies in prison to sex workers on the street in Cambodia -- demonstrates the sometimes counterintuitive measures that could stall the spread of this devastating disease.

Elizabeth Pisani uses unconventional field research to understand how real-world behaviors influence AIDS transmission -- and to overhaul antiquated, ineffective prevention strategies.

An alumna of various government health agencies, Elizabeth Pisani is now an assumption-busting independent researcher and analyst, polling transgendered sex workers, drug addicts and others to illuminate the surprising (and often ignored) demographics that belie traditional studies. Pisani is fearlessly outspoken on the global failure to understand and manage the realities of AIDS, decrying the tangled roles that money, votes, and media play in the public health landscape. She shows how politics and "morality" have hogtied funding, and advocates for putting dollars where they can actually make a difference. As the Globe and Mail wrote: "Pisani is lucid, colourful, insightful and impatient."