When Covid-19 started to shake the world in early 2020, former medical and science correspondent Neville Hodgkinson felt a disturbing sense of déjà vu. This was not primarily because of the damage caused by the virus, but by the global response to it. Powerful, state-funded bureaucracies mishandled the emergency so badly as to devastate millions of lives the world over. Big Brother, Big Pharma, Big Tech, mass media and academia all came together in an unholy alliance that caused a far-reaching betrayal of individual, social and national interests. Hodgkinson was working at the London Sunday Times when a similar global panic arose in the mid-1980s. American government scientists promulgated the idea that a lethal, sexually transmitted virus, HIV, was spreading silently across the world, causing a collapse of the immune system among those infected. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars flowed into the hands of drug companies, researchers, and countless non-governmental organisations in the belief that the lives of millions were at stake. Hodgkinson reported on Aids conventionally for a few years before learning that several leading scientists had challenged "HIV" as the cause of Aids from the start, but had been silenced amidst the panic and propaganda. The then Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil decided the voices of these scientists deserved to be heard, and in April 1992 the newspaper became the first major media outlet to question the 'deadly virus' theory. Despite widespread condemnation, Neil supported an ever-deepening critique of the theory over a two-year period. In mid-1994, Hodgkinson left the paper to write a book on the controversy. Published in 1996 by Fourth Estate, it became an early victim of 'cancel culture', subsequently topping a list of 'Books You Must Not Read' in a work on political correctness in science. Enormous funds continued to flow into Aids science, long after it became clear that predictions of spread based on the virus theory were false. This biotech bonanza sustained illusions about Aids that continue to this day, and even funded genetic engineering research by American and Chinese scientists that culminated in the Covid catastrophe. The 'cancelled' 1996 book is now being republished inside this new volume, as required reading for anybody who wants to learn the truth of how badly the scientific community can go off track. The striking parallels with Covid are described, along with a summary of the many mistakes that created and sustained the illusory 'HIV' hypothesis.