And the Band Played On

The AIDS crisis, told while it unfolded in the US, with a focus on SF and NY. The book is many things:

It gives the history of how researchers tried to identify the virus causing AIDS, which was at least partially news to me. I knew about the rivalry between Gallo at the National Cancer Institute in the US and the team around Françoise Barré-Sinoussi in Paris. But not to what extend it was carried out.

The book also is a shocking indictment of the inaction of public health officials and basically everyone involved in the crisis. It makes you wonder how our world would look like if there had been less bigotry and a quicker response.

Last, but by no means least, the book tells the story of the many people involved in the crisis back when. It's so depressing, you can feel the frustration of people trying to get the public health system to finally act, all while they and the ones they love are painfully dying around them.

A deeply moving read, recommended for: basically everyone, as it's a universal topic, but especially if you're into biomed, public health and/or gay culture and the respective histories.

I didn't finish this. Reads like bad journalism. The story is, of course, tragic, but the various accounts ring false like the stories that actors tell. For example, we find: "On a hunch, Gottlieb twisted some arms to convince pathologists to take a small scraping of the patient's lung tissue through a nonsurgical maneuver." OK, so the author isn't a doctor, but 1. pathologists don't do endobronchial biopsies, pulmonologists do, 2.nobody has to twist a pulmonologists arm to do an endobronchial biopsy or for a pathologist to interpret one, 3.I was around when AIDS showed up and we were fascinated by it and were eager to get that material, 4.Since this little sentence has things in it that I know are false, what is the author saying with it - is he building a case? Many other stories ring false and have doubtless been spun somehow, after all this book has a message and the author is the man with a hammer. I am reminded of the oft noticed phenomenon that when you have personal knowledge of a newspaper story, you are startled by its errors (for example, if you were the one interviewed), and then realize that the stories that you know nothing about are probably similarly inaccurate. The story of AIDS deserves better than this.

Shilts' contemporary account of the advent of what is now HIV/AIDS is truly a classic. Shilts takes an unbiased, journalistic approach to the science surrounding the discovery of the "GRID" complex, the underlying virus, the epidemiology required to figure out how the disease was spread as well as the international politics limiting the closing of the bathhouses, treatment, testing of the blood supply and delaying the correct taxonomy of HIV.

Interspersed with this, Shilts shows the ready a very personal view of the stories of individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and their personal struggles both as patients and as advocates. These interspersed narratives are touching and strong, and completely unfictionalized.

Although it would be easy for these one of the many different components of the narrative to become overwhelmed by the vastness and intricacy of the story that Shilts is telling, he handles each of these components deftly, making the 600 page book a manageable and entertaining read.

Although And the Band Played On is now over 20 years old, it was the first comprehensive account of the advent of HIV/AIDS, it was an instant classic in its time and its contemporary nature lends an honesty to the homophobia, politicking and counter-productive maneuvering on all sides that would likely be glossed over in a modern telling.