And the Band Played On

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is the definitive book about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Randy Shilts, the author, was a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle who subsequently died of AIDS. It starts with patients suffering from a strange new ailment, and ends with the July 1985 announcement that Rock Hudson has AIDS.

As a whole, American society did an awful job of researching AIDS, blocking its spread, and treating the sufferers. The Reagan administration wanted to keep health costs down and prevented health officials from spending funds that Congress had allocated for AIDS. Gay groups were more concerned with individual rights and keeping the sex-filled bathhouses open than with facing a deadly epidemic. Blood banks refused to acknowledge the dangers of blood transfusions, since they didn't want to pay testing costs or discourage donors. Some scientists fixated on receiving credit for their discoveries, to the detriment of the general research. New York City, which had the most AIDS cases, refused to spend public funds fighting AIDS, in part because Mayor Ed Koch didn't want to foster rumors that he was gay.

The book focuses on a few dozen central people: AIDS victims and their families, doctors, public health officials, gay activists, and scientists. Shilts interviewed most of these people and reveals the cultures and bureaucracies they were immersed in. A few heroic individuals struggled to contend with a horrible problem that America refused to take seriously.

My only complaint about the book is its length; half of its 600 pages could be cut without losing much. Still, it's a story well worth reading, in its own right and as a reminder of the life-and-death consequences of the decisions that our leaders make.