And the band played on.. by Randy Shilts book review

Rating 3/5 

Genre journalism, AIDS epidemic 

I wanted to read this book to learn about AIDS. How it has started, what were the events that lead to its discovery and why it doesn't have a cure. Most of what i wanted to learn, which I call useful information, is found in the first 100 and last 100 pages. The rest of the chapters and stories in the 1000+ page book seemed irrelevant that I just skipped them. It was too much information..too many details. I was afraid that I would lose sight of the forest for too many trees. Although it seemed like thorough journalism and the author at the end claimed to have included no fiction in the narrative, the characters are one too many, the story is boringly repetitive. 

The author fails to evoke an emotion of injustice and unfairness through conveying the same message over and over again. At the bottom of it, the reason for the unchecked wide spread of AIDS epidemic in the United states between late 1970s to around 1985 is insouciance of newspapers, government and mainstream media. And that is because it is a disease mostly afflicting homosexual gay community. The sexual practices of gays were considered shameful and a taboo. The media and newspapers failed to shine a light upon the disease creating enough awareness and the government didn't allocate enough funds for research on the disease and its treatment. 

The author claims that the disease has started in African continent and moved to United states through Europe. When sailors from many countries arrived at New York on July 4,1976 to celebrate the 200 year anniversary of independence for America, the disease spread between individuals of different races. He marks it as the first point of entry for the disease into USA. Soon due to the libertine, orgy like nature of sex clubs, bath houses for gays, the infection spread quickly. I was shocked to learn that a typical gay person of that time had 250 sexual partners an year. The no strings attached and pure physically stimulating sex was enjoyed with no form of protection. They considered it a symbol of freedom and privilege to be able to do so. 

In no time, cases start piling up at medical centers and hospitals. Most of the victims shared the symptoms of a skin cancer called kaposi's sarcoma where purple colored blisters form on multiple places of skin, pneumonocystis carnii  which is a form of pneumonia that clogged the lungs, massive weight loss, fatigue, loss of energy and drive to do anything. It also spread to other groups of people who were dependent on blood transfusion because there were no check on blood containing antibodies for HIV at that time.Hemophiliacs were the other group of people who took factor 8 which was extracted for blood of another person and helped in the clotting of blood. While the filtering process of blood to prepare factor 8 removed most microbes, the virus being too small escaped through.

As cases started climbing to staggering numbers, the pressure on government and CDC increased and  they caved in. They eventually shut down bath houses in San Francisco,  Los Angeles,  New York which were the most affected states due to the virus. Government gave enough funds for treatments to be developed and awareness to be spread. Although AIDS now has no cure, there are treatments that make it possible to extend the life span of a person from 5 years to 20 years after being diagnosed with the disease. 

I am going with a rating of 3/5.