Today, it’s easy to forget the days when an HIV diagnosis implied a death sentence within 24 months. Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On tells the story of how the AIDS pandemic played out in the epicenter of San Francisco, and David France, in this book, tells how it played out in the other American epicenter of New York City. He tells how activists and scientists sometimes fought and sometimes collaborated to find how triple-drug therapy (nicknamed HAART) made an HIV diagnosis to become a livable condition. He also shared how modern biomedical research has learned how to help all impacted parties collaborate early and often.
HIV continues to have many angles and dimensions to it, so each book can only limit itself to one perspective. France’s perspective is from New York City and heavily involved in the activist community. The disease affected him personally, so he is not a disinterested observer. This well-researched book explicitly tells his personal tale of fear and loss alongside that of other activists. Indeed, such anecdotes only empower this book’s account more.
A philosopher and poet by nature, I love heavy books, but this book was, at times, heavy even for me. I could only read so much in one sitting. At 600+ pages, it requires some time to work through and to digest. However, after all that hard, somber work, the joy conveyed in the ending when treatment was found – well, it brought a tear to my eye and a leap to my heart. France does a good job of relating what it was like to suddenly hear that instead of your community facing an inevitable death sentence, it has found new life.
Personally, I’m engaged in HIV advocacy in HIV vaccine trials. I’m deeply saddened by the devastating federal cuts to research and treatment, especially for sub-Saharan Africa. Books like this help us to remember what it was like when HIV was untamed. It also reminds us that when other infectious diseases cause pandemics, overdramatized reactions are normal in pandemics, regardless of political affiliation. This book acquired an audience in the LGBTQ+ community, but it deserves a much wider audience, which it seems to have received. Like any pandemic, HIV should have always been a human rights issue bound up in love of one’s neighbors. The tragic reality, covered here, needs to instruct us to react better next time.
How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS
By David France
Copyright (c) 2016
Picador
ISBN13 9781509839407
Page Count: 624
Genre: History of Disease; HIV/AIDS
www.amazon.com