And the Band Played On

I finally got to reading it. And it is amazing.

I watched “And The Band Played On” twice during college. Freshman bio class on infectious disease and immunology and my senior virology class. The movie was based on the book of the same title, written by Randy Shilts, that at 8:00 am today I finally finished. A two hour movie and 600 pages of the first 5 years of the AIDS epidemic. It was this movie/book that has captivated my interest in the disease and sealed my goal of becoming a doctor and working in public health. And as much as I was awed at the magnitude that the disease spread and confounded every aspect of international life, more than anything I was mad. I’m still mad.

I can’t stress enough how mad I am at the fact that a disease so deadly and so ready to be understood was completely ignored by the public until 1985. The first reported case of the disease, based on the book, was in 1981 – seriously, 4 years? It took four years and an in-the-closet actor coming back from France because the treatment he believed would save him didn’t for the American media to finally go “Snap, this is important”? Fail! I also couldn’t believe the inadequacy of the bureaucracy, the jealousy of the scientific community, and the overall apathy and denial of those hard hit with AIDS. I kept reading and just couldn’t believe the lengths that people went through to deny funding for essential AIDS research. I couldn’t believe that instead of rallying together to fight a common enemy, divisions and factions within groups wanting their agenda prevailed.

The two things that blew my life most of all – scientific jealousy and total indifference of the public. Long story short HIV was officially co-discovered by the French (at the Pasteur Institute) and Robert Gallo (at the National Cancer Institute). I really felt for the French because they had discovered the virus, which they called LAV, a year earlier than Gallo’s HTLV-III. Gallo had one the publicity by announcing his discovery first because he had the scientific clout to and had not at the least acknowledge both the French and CDC’s contributions. What the hell? Seriously, what the hell!? Does prestige really matter when thousands of people were being infected and the mortality rate of the disease was close to 100%? That and the lack of funding for AIDS research until the mid-80s severely crippled the essence of the scientific community.

What else crippled finding the virus and possibly finding a way to stop it before it became such a global phenoma? The fact that it was reported in gay people first. For four years doctors from the hardest hit cities – San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles – were taking care of patients in vain and no one gave two shits. The only city that enacted any kind of action to combat the disease was San Francisco, and it was horribly inadequate to handle the growing number of cases and prevent even more from occurring. What did the other cities and the rest of the country do? Absolutely nothing. They just pushed it aside since it only affected a minority not accepted during the conservative 80s. Are people really that ignorant as to think a disease would selectively target people based on their sexuality? I just couldn’t believe that others, especially people of power, means, and resources, could care so less for their fellow man. Unless they were straight. Then it was a problem. What the hell?

Despite still being angry and frustrated at the sheer negligence of the world, like I said, this book has sealed my desire to be in public service as a doctor. The struggles of the clinicians to treat their ailing patients, the frustration of scientists to isolate the agent, the excitement of tracking down an answer to your questions. And most importantly, the joy you get when you see people coming together for the better good. Although my read-through was filled with disdain, there were so many people working together in order to combat this disease. A handful of people really can make a difference, even if everything seems so futile. My hero was/is Don Francis, who worked for the CDC to try to isolate the virus during those tumultuous 5 years – he put health and help first all the time, over politics, over popularity, over superficiality. Love him.

Reading this made me realize how little I really knew about HIV/AIDS. The book has a recurring theme of Before and After – before AIDS and after AIDS. Although I have vague memories of hearing the acronym during high school, I don’t think I understood its magnitude and impact until I went to college.

This book helped me see my before and after. Before, I had simply thought of AIDS as a devasting disease, one that has fallen back in the limelight because of new anti-viral treatments and the shift to the more popular cancer talk. Now and after I see its global impact, its mark on the lives of all of us, and shows how we as a species can either break down or come back together again. *phew* Now I’m not so mad anymore.