“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. Ortleb’s caustic humor and piercing analysis of what he has dubbed “political epidemiology,” and “homodemiology” by the Centers for Disease Control alone makes Truth to Power worth the read. 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. Given the recent rise of infectious disease alarms around the world, Truth to Power is, additionally, remarkably timely for those who seek to understand what drives the American public health establishment in times of crises. A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir.”

—Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic

“Charles Ortleb and the New York Native which he so brilliantly led was the absolutely indispensable source for all information—medical, political, personal—in the first five years of the AIDS epidemic when the major media in this country as well as the medical establishment tried so hard to avoid the topic. Not since I.F.Stone have we seen how important individual investigative journalism could be in breaking through society’s silence, when silence indeed equaled death. It is good to finally have the Native’s heroic work put on the historical record for all to see.”

—Michael Denneny, author of Decent Passions and Lovers: The Story of Two Men

"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

“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

“It is undeniable that many major AIDS stories were Ortleb’s months and sometimes years before mainstream journalists took them up.”

—Katie Leishman, Rolling Stone, March 23, 1989