And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts.
This book chronicles the first years of AIDS from 1980 to 1985, and how the government, media, gay activist groups, and the scientific community failed to take action that would have saved lives. It's not big on the science; it is focused on the people involved. It is a story that focuses on belief, indifference, politicking, and grieving.
I really enjoyed this book; I wish I had read it years ago. The main complaint I have is Stilts' critcism of the scientific process. Several passages take a critical tone towards scientists who believed (in 1981-1982) there is "not enough evidence" that AIDS is spread through an infectious agent. Without reading the research papers myself, I wouldn't be able to answer that question. However, I don't think the question of AIDS' cause (other hypotheses were bad drugs and immune system overload) had definitely been determined at that time.
Two things that jumped out at me in reading this book. The first is the indifference or outright hostility gays had towards efforts to fight AIDS. I grew up in the early 90s, and my memories of that time include advertisements on MTV for safe sex, a bombardment fo messages about STDs at school, and the fight against AIDS being led by gay activists. It's a shock to learn that wasn't always the case. It seemed like gay men didn't think AIDS was a problem until their friends and lovers started getting sick. In respect to AIDS, gays were in the worst of both officials went out of their way not to offend them, and the media hardly discussed the disease. They fought tooth and nail over the bathhouses. When an HIV antibody test became available in 1985, a lot of gays fought against its licensure. The rhetoric came to the extreme that such a test would result in gays being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Yeah, I get it, they were worried about confidentiality and discrimination. But at the expense of innocent people dying? At the expense of their friends dying?
The second point actually has little to do with AIDS, but the emotional problems of promiscuous sexuality. Although having a lot of casual sex was the norm at that time, a few people in the gay community were speaking out against it, and being thoroughly chastised, or in the case of
Larry Kramer, ostracized. An observation from a man visiting his first bathhouse in San Francisco:
Knowing the words for the acts didn't help him fathom the meaning of what he was swseeing. Where was the affection? he wondered. Where was the interaction of mind and boyd that creates a meaningful sexual experience? It was as if these people, who had made so separate from scoeity by virtue of their sexuality, were now making their sexuality utterly separate from themselves. Their bodies were tools though which they could experience physical senation. T.he complete focus on the physical aspect of sex meaning constantly devising new, more extreme sexual acts because the expeirence relied on heightened sensory rather than emotional stimulation. Anyway, check out the book if you're interested in GLBT politics or diseases
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