Charles Ortleb

This is a very funny book about talking pigs. But it is so much more than that. Charles Ortleb has written a contemporary allegorical fable about the overlapping breakdown of the porcine and human public health systems. As African Swine Fever Virus, a deadly virus that infects pigs, is spreading in China and threatens to infect pigs in Western Europe and may even reach America, the timing of this provocative novel could not be more perfect. As fears grow that the virus might be capable of infecting humans, this book raises troubling questions about the honesty and competence of public health officials. Could the next human epidemic be lurking in pigs? Has a pig virus already quietly infected us and is it responsible for mysterious illnesses like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimer's, AIDS, and autism? Charles Ortleb's novel brilliantly reveals the political and existential status of man and pig in a laugh-out-loud, mini-epic of a narrative that readers everywhere will be quoting at the water cooler. The book has so many dynamic moving parts that it reads like it is reflecting the state of our world in real time. Some will call Ortleb's novel an edgy, postmodern, meta-satire, while others will deem it a jolly good tale that opens our eyes to the situation of the human-like pigs and porcine humans in our midst. In the upside-down world of this visionary book, the pigs talk and the humans oink. The pigs are more terrified of getting cockamamie diseases from humans than the humans are of getting them from pigs. One never escapes the feeling in this zany tale Ortleb has strategically nailed something utterly monstrous that will one day bite us all on the ass, if it hasn't already. This provocative and hilarious book is as wild and crazy as a fox. A literary and philosophical torch has been passed from Orwell to Ortleb. The world has a new classic. Charles Ortleb was the first publisher and editor-in-chief to provide the world with extensive coverage of AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at a time when most of the media was looking the other way. He is the author of several books that have provided the world with the definitive history of the AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic.

The African Swine Fever Novel

Christopher Street

One day soon, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome crisis will be coming to Broadway. This explosive play by the author of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up captures the complicated relationship he had with the celebrated intellectual, Susan Sontag.Charles Ortleb met Susan Sontag in 1973 at a gay conference in New York City. He was twenty-three and she was forty. Ortleb had recently moved to New York City and like many aspiring young writers at the time, was fascinated by Sontag. He couldn't believe his luck when she agreed to do an interview with him for a new magazine called Out.This is the first time that interview will reach a major audience, and there is one dramatic moment in which it almost seemed like Sontag was trying to come out of the closet. After asking a number of probing questions about her work, Sontag said to Ortleb, "You don't miss a thing, do you?"The play turns dark and disturbing as Ortleb describes his subsequent two meetings with Sontag in the late 70s and the late 80s. Ortleb, who ultimately published a newspaper and became the first publisher to take AIDS and Chronic Fatigue seriously, met with Sontag when she was working on her book about AIDS and warned her that his newspaper's reporting suggested the government was not being truthful about the nature of AIDS. The last time Ortleb saw Sontag, she hugged him and said, "You're very real to me."Ultimately, Sontag not only did not listen to his advice, but she went out of her way to indirectly attack Ortleb and his newspaper in her book AIDS and Its Metaphors. Ortleb is finally speaking out about this shocking development that occurred decades ago.Ortleb's discussion of Sontag's betrayal of their friendship and ultimately of the gay community, raises new issues about Sontag's character which many are now questioning. The play will dramatically change the way the public looks at AIDS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Susan Sontag.

A Docuplay by the Author of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-Up

Susan Sontag As Metaphor

Thomas Steele

Michael Denneny

This second collection of more than twenty stories of gay fiction from "Christopher Street" magazine highlights works by David Leavitt, John Fox, David Plante, James Purdy, Robert Ferro, and others

New Fiction from Christopher Street

First Love/last Love

Sometimes, in order to return civilization to its senses and better angels, one must take a fearless trip into the barnyard. And not be afraid to laugh. Pig: A Memoir, which appears 70 years after Animal Farm, updates the political and existential status of man and pig in a laugh-out-loud, mini-epic of a narrative that readers everywhere will be quoting at the water cooler. Pig: A Memoir has so many dynamic moving parts that it reads like it is reflecting the state of our world in real time. A contemporary allegorical fable about the overlapping breakdown of the porcine and human public health systems, Charles Ortleb's little masterpiece is full of the absurd zaniness of Catch-22 and the gritty horror of The Jungle. He has used his journalistic, critical, and comedic skills to expose our planet's newest biomedical Silent Spring. Some will call Pig: A Memoir an edgy, postmodern, meta-satire, while others will deem it a jolly good tale that opens our eyes to the situation of the human-like pigs and porcine humans in our midst. In the upside-down world of Pig: A Memoir, the pigs talk and the humans oink. The pigs are more terrified of getting cockamamie diseases from humans than the humans are of getting them from pigs. One never escapes the feeling in Pig: A Memoir, that Ortleb has strategically nailed something utterly monstrous that will one day bite us all on the ass, if it hasn't already. This provocative and hilarious book is as wild and crazy as a fox. A literary and philosophical torch has been passed from Orwell to Ortleb. The world has a new classic. Charles Ortleb was one of the most important publishers of the 20th century. Called a -visionary editor- by The New York Times, his newspaper was the first to break the stories of AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He is the author of Truth to Power, an epic history of the AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic. For the past decade he has been the only journalist in the world to raise awareness about the public health threat of HHV-6 at his website, HHV-6 University.

A Memoir

"If any one in the government had known why Peter was in Manhattan, a law would have been found under which he could have been put on the first train out. But one could still arrive anonymously in the Metropolis and be given the benefit of the doubt. Not that Peter had bad intentions. No, it was just that beneath his pulchritude lay an agenda that none of the city fathers or mothers could have embraced. Peter had come to New York to assassinate the AIDS epidemic." "Some gay men seemed to think that they were junior members of scientific research teams because they were taking experimental AIDS medications. Peter wondered, are they all brain dead? Was the gay universe ending before his very eyes? Was this another inexorable moment in the dark history of the sacrificial lambs? Was he in a time capsule? Had he been transported back to the Middle Ages and were gay men now biomedical flagellants?" Inspired by Robert Bly's "Iron John," "Iron Peter" is a satirical novel about a handsome gay man who comes to New York City to try and save the gay community from being destroyed by the lies the government is telling about AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome. It may be the only novel ever written that dares to tell the inconvenient truth about the politics and science of "AIDS." When people finally start to realize how much they don't know about the real epidemic, it is bound to become a classic.

A Year in the Mythopoetic Life of New York City : a Novel

Iron Peter

This is the first chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb's riveting history of the HHV-6, AIDS, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemics. Ortleb was the publisher and editor-in-chief of New York Native, the amazing newspaper that broke the biggest medical stories of the 20th century. Nobody in the world has done more than Ortleb to sound the alarm about all the diseases linked to HHV-6. The first chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up takes the reader into the offices of New York Native, a small newspaper in Manhattan with a mostly gay readership. The paper had barely begun its existence when the medical and scientific story of the century fell into its lap. Charles Ortleb describes what it was like the night the first story of what turned out to be AIDS broke in The New York Times. In a dark time of terror and confusion, he decided to make the New York Native the paper of record and conscience for the epidemic. And it did it at a time when many of his readers didn't want to hear anything about it. The reporting his paper did was so thorough that, in Rolling Stone, David Black said New York Native deserved a Pulitzer Prize. In this first chapter we learn about all the different causation theories that scientists came up with, including the compelling notion that AIDS had originated in sick pigs. As time went on, Ortleb's paper began to catch the Centers for Disease Control in a number of lies and as a result, the paper's reporting became more critical and investigative. Nobody expected a newspaper like New York Native to behave like Woodward and Bernstein. Ortleb's determination to get to the bottom of the story put him on a collision course with the medical and political establishment. "A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir." --Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic

1980-1984: the Fog of Epidemiology

New York Native

Charles Ortleb's Truth to Power takes you inside the New York Native, one of the most unique and consequential newspapers of the twentieth century. Shortly after starting his small gay New York City newspaper in late 1980, one of the biggest scientific and political stories of our time fell into his lap in the form of the AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic. What he did with that story has secured his newspaper's place in history. Under his guidance, a succession of intrepid journalists did some of their greatest work uncovering the crucial facts about the labyrinthine epidemic. Ortleb made the decision to follow the facts wherever they led. His team of uncompromising investigative reporters inevitably stepped on the toes of the most powerful people in the medical and political establishment. Perhaps not surprisingly, the latter fought back by seeking to discredit the New York Native and even, in time, close its doors. But Ortleb stood his ground for as long as possible and as a result the world now can have a clear understanding of the relationship of AIDS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and HHV-6, the transmissible virus that now threatens everyone on this planet. Anyone who has wondered why the medical establishment will not tell the truth about the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic will find the disturbing answer in Truth to Power. What makes Ortleb so unusual is that not only did he have the natural instincts of a journalist, editor and publisher, but he was also a poet, a fiction writer and a budding political philosopher. Truth to Power is not just a compelling work of journalism and history, but also a major contribution to the intellectual life of our time. "Charles Ortleb, as editor-in-chief and publisher of the New York Native, was and remains the Izzy Stone of science reporting. He was fearless in his pursuit of the origins of the AIDS epidemic and the government's response in the 1980s. When his newspaper began to diverge from the dogmatic mainstream, however, he was ostracized by the very people he was seeking to inform. In addition, his laser-like focus in the Native on the simultaneous emergence of so-called "chronic fatigue syndrome"-a topic to which he assigned a full-time reporter, Neenyah Ostrom-was laudable. These disorders remain too much alike to arbitrarily submerge one in favor of the other, as the government has done without blinking for thirty years. Ortleb took considerable risks to profitability by pursuing every avenue of investigation on these matters. Yet, as much as Ortleb was criticized, the Native was also a "must read" of its time. When I was reporting my own book on the latter disease, I frequently spied the Native on the desks of high level scientists at the National Institutes of Health. As much as he made them uncomfortable, everyone in the AIDS research establishment wanted to know what Ortleb was going to report next. . . . But the history he recounts here is crucial reading for anyone who missed the Native in its heyday or who didn't "get it" the first time around. . . . A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir."-Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic "Because of the extraordinary reporting of the New York Native, the city's gay community had been exposed to far more information about AIDS than San Francisco in 1981 and 1982."-Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic "The gay press-with the exception of the New York Native, which deserves a Pulitzer Prize for its comprehensive coverage [of AIDS]-hasn't been much better than the straight press." -David Black, Rolling Stone, April 25, 1985

The New York Native 1980-1997

Truth to Power

This bold, uncompromising book is the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome epidemics. It's one of those books that will inspire you to think outside of the box. The Closing Argument is a provocative courtroom novella about an African-American man who is tried in Connecticut for the crime of infecting a woman with HIV, the virus that the American government has declared the official cause of AIDS. In a move that shocks the nation, his attorney puts the government and the AIDS establishment on trial and tries to convince the jury that everything the public has been told about the nature of the AIDS and CFS epidemics is both racist and homophobic. The author makes you the jury and you have to decide from the attorney's closing argument if you can believe anything you've been told about AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, HIV and HHV-6. This is the first work of fiction in history to focus on the cover-up of the devastating virus HHV-6 which has now been linked to many diseases in addition to AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome. Nicholas Regush, former producer at ABC News called the book "Eye-popping reading if you dare to expand your scope of thinking about AIDS and justice."

The Closing Argument

This is the third chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb's riveting history of the HHV-6, AIDS, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemics. Ortleb was the publisher and editor-in-chief of New York Native, the amazing newspaper that broke the biggest medical stories of the 20th century. Nobody in the world has done more than Ortleb to sound the alarm about all the diseases linked to HHV-6.In this chapter, the battle about the nature of the AIDS epidemic becomes more contentious and critics begin to be censored, silenced, and stigmatized. Texas begins considering a quarantine for people with AIDS. Scientist Jane Teas suggests that HIV, the so-called cause of AIDS, might in fact be an endogenous retrovirus--an effect rather than the cause of AIDS. Teas and Beldekas test AIDS patients for African Swine Fever virus and a number are positive. When Ortleb reads an article by celebrity Ben Stein in an L.A. newspaper about a chronic illness breaking out in everyone he knows in Los Angeles and New York, he suggests that this might be the manifestation of the AIDS epidemic in the general population. It is the beginning of Ortleb's argument that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS are just different faces of the same basic epidemic. In one of the most important articles ever published in New York Native, reporter Ann Fettner interviews an employee working on AIDS in Florida for the Centers for Disease Control. The man, Gus Sermos, insists that the CDC is falsifying important data about the epidemic in Florida that would have changed our understanding of AIDS and its risk groups. When Robert Gallo's lab announces the discovery of a new DNA virus (eventually called HHV-6) the New York Native points out that Gallo's so-called discovery resembles African Swine Fever virus, the agent Teas and Beldekas had found evidence for in AIDS patients. Given that Gallo's lab is increasingly being accused of stealing credit for HIV, the Native suggests that the Gallo lab may have done the same thing with there DNA virus. That fact that the new virus is found in both AIDS patients and people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome strengthens Ortleb's argument that CFS and AIDS are part of the same epidemic. "A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir."-Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic

1986: A New Virus Or a Renamed Old One?

This is the second chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb's riveting history of the HHV-6, AIDS, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemics. Ortleb was the publisher and editor-in-chief of New York Native, the amazing newspaper that broke the biggest medical stories of the 20th century. Nobody in the world has done more than Ortleb to sound the alarm about all the diseases linked to HHV-6. In the second chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb writes about the work of Ann Fettner, a reporter who wrote several major investigative pieces for New York Native. Fettner reported on an outbreak of Multiple Sclerosis in nurses who worked in a hospital in Key West, Florida. The cases raised the possibility that some agent associated with AIDS might also be causing Multiple Sclerosis. That agent turned out to be HHV-6, a virus that New York Native subsequently reported on more than any other publication in the world. In this chapter, Ortleb also discusses his relationship with Jim Monroe, someone who acted as New York Native's "Deep Throat" at the CDC. Monroe informed Ortleb about the manner in which the CDC was manipulating the way that AIDS blood tests were conducted. Monroe also advised Ortleb that all major decisions about AIDS were being made by Reagan's White House, suggesting that the science of AIDS was being politically shaped. In this chapter Ortleb also describes the beginning of his newspaper's campaign to wake the world up to the fraud coming out of the laboratory of top AIDS scientist Robert Gallo. "A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir."-Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic

1985: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to know the disturbing history of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic. Why have the CDC and NIH pretended that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a mystery for over three decades? By the end of this book of inconvenient truths the answer is crystal clear. The shocking news and bold analysis in this page-turner could lead to a revolution in the science and politics of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, AIDS, autism, and many other illnesses. As the publisher and editor-in-chief of a small newspaper in New York, Charles Ortleb was the first journalist to devote a publication to uncovering the truth about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He assigned Neenyah Ostrom the duty of following every twist and turn of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome story. No newspaper in the world did more to warn the world about the virus called HHV-6 which seems to be triggering Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and many other immunological disorders. This provocative book will end the injustice of the silent treatment Neenyah Ostrom's reporting has been getting from the media and The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome community. Ostrom blew the lid off one of the biggest medical secrets of our time: the link between the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic and AIDS. Ostrom interviewed most of the major researchers in the field, as well as countless patients and government scientists. She uncovered so many similarities between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS that she came to the conclusion that they are part of the same epidemic, and she argued that until their connection is admitted by top government researchers, there is little hope of making real progress in the fight against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Charles Ortleb's book captures all the challenges and excitement of running a small newspaper that was publishing a brilliant journalist who essentially was the Woodward and Bernstein of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic. In Rolling Stone, David Black said Ortleb's newspaper deserved a Pulitzer Prize. This book was originally published with the title "Truth to Power" in 2016. Hillary Johnson, the author of Osler's Web, called it "A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir."

How a Little Newspaper Solved the Biggest Scientific and Political Mystery of Our Time

The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-Up

"The Last Lovers on Earth" is the first collection of short stories by Charles Ortleb. The stories capture the precarious position of gay people in America today. With unprecedented insight, Ortleb uses humor to tell painful truths about where the gay community has been and where it is headed.Three stories from the collection were the basis of the hilarious and disturbing independent film, "The Last Lovers on Earth" which is available as a DVD and for instant viewing on Amazon.

Stories from Dark Times

The Last Lovers on Earth

This is the book that got the world's attention when it was introduced on Instagram by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In this explosive little book, the first publisher to devote his newspaper to the coverage of AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome details the role of Anthony Fauci in the cover-up of the truth about the relationship of the two epidemics. While mistaken members of the media like Laurie Garrett and Rachel Maddow have called Anthony Fauci "a great American," Dr. Fauci will soon take in his place in history as the chief operator of a virtual Ponzi scheme that has plunged the world into a dystopian medical darkness of fraud, deceit, and neglect. This book is a must-read chapter from "The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up Volume Two" with a new afterword that explores the extensive damage Fauci's Ponzi scheme has done to the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome community, people stigmatized with "HIV/AIDS," and everyone suffering from the viruses that Fauci's cover-up has been concealing from the world: the HHV-6/7/8 family of viruses. The list of the potential victims of Fauci's Ponzi scheme includes virtually everyone. Even the health of millions of doctors and nurses has been put at risk. These are the elements of Fauci's scientific Ponzi scheme: 1. Nosological fraud. (That's the branch of medicine dealing with the classification of disease. It is ground zero for public health fraud.) 2. Epidemiological fraud. 3. Virological fraud. 4. Treatment fraud. (Treatments that harm more than they heal or conceal more than they reveal.) 5. Public health policy fraud. 6. Concealment of negative scientific data and paradigm-challenging anomalies. 7. Use of an elite network of "old boys" and pseudo-activist provocateurs to censor critics and whistleblowers.8. Chronic obscurantism. 9. If necessary, vigilantism and witch-hunts against any intellectuals, scientists, or citizens who constitute any form of resistance to the Ponzi scheme. .Fauci and his puppets at NIH have created a real mess.

Charles Ortleb

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