[1] He is the son of Tobey and Rocco Fumento, the latter being a professor emeritus in English, film, and creative writing who has worked at the University of Illinois.
Nature stated that in some of Fumento's work, "some important scientific issues are dismissed or glossed over" and that "there is a fine line between persuasion and persecution.
"[10] After he was fired from Scripps Howard News Service in 2006, he was described by Science as "a vigorous defender of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries over the years".
[11] He is best known for science and health issues, especially what he considers faux crises, including the 1987 "heterosexual AIDS explosion,"[12] swine flu[13] and the alleged epidemic of runaway Toyotas.
[14][independent source needed] Fumento has been a nationally syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service (before his firing in 2006),[15] a legal writer for The Washington Times, a science correspondent for Reason magazine, an editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and the first national issues reporter for Investor's Business Daily.
[16][independent source needed] A finalist for the National Magazine Award, he has had articles appear in such magazines as Reader's Digest, The Atlantic Monthly, Forbes, Forbes.com, USA Weekend, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, Reason, Policy Review, The American Spectator, Nature Medicine, The Spectator (London), a3Umwelt (Austria), and The Bulletin (Australia).
[7] His television appearances include Nightline; ABC World News; ABC News 20/20, numerous programs on CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox; PBS; MacNeil-Lehrer; CNBC; the BBC; the Canadian Broadcasting Network; C-SPAN; the Christian Broadcasting Network; Donahue; This Week with David Brinkley, the History Channel, ESPN, and many others.
In addition to AIDS, Fumento's writing on science has covered such topics as global warming, ADHD, obesity, the health dangers of breast implants, teen drug use, and agrarian utopianism.
Environmental groups, he holds, willingly accept claims that manmade compounds cause cancer but gloss over the fact that the toxicity tests often involve quantities that are millions of times larger than what a human would ever ingest.
[19] In his view, it is impossible to test megadoses of chemicals on mice or rats and to extrapolate the results to conclusions about small doses on humans.
[citation needed] Fumento has argued that the perception of infectious disease outbreaks becomes exaggerated or distorted by those who exploit them to serve various agendas.
At issue were opinion columns Fumento had written concerning the biotechnology firm Monsanto Company while he was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
[15][46][47][48] General manager Peter Copeland explained that Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto.... Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information.
"[52][independent source needed] In a May 2012 essay, Fumento said that he considered himself part of the "Old Right" but that he rejected the "extreme right," which, he wrote, had taken over the Republican Party and dominated conservative media.
"[53][independent source needed] In a January 23, 2020, New York Post opinion article, "Don’t buy the media hype over the new China virus," he called concerns about COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic "tinfoil-hat paranoia" and wrote that "there appears to be nothing very special about this outbreak".