And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

by Randy Shilts

The bitter truth was that AIDS did not just happen to America—it was allowed to happen by an array of institutions, all of which failed to perform their appropriate tasks to safeguard the public health. This failure of the system leaves a legacy of unnecessary suffering that will haunt the Western world for decades to come.

Nobody came out and said it was all right for gays to drop dead; it was just that homosexuals didn’t seem to warrant the kind of urgent concern another set of victims would engender. Scientists didn’t care, because there was little glory, fame, and funding to be had in this field; there wasn’t likely to be money or prestige as long as the newspapers ignored the outbreak, and the press didn’t like writing about homosexuals. So nobody cared, and all Michael Gottlieb could do was return to Los Angeles to preside over more deaths.

“What do you do with sheep that get this?” he asked eagerly. “There is no treatment,” the expert said. “We shoot them.”

What was the threshold of death and suffering society could tolerate?