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

by Randy Shilts

How timely was the discovery of the long-sought AIDS virus? Partisans of the scientific establishment and the Reagan administration pointed out that the mystery of the AIDS epidemic was solved much faster than for any comparable disease. This is an accurate observation. Such analysis, however, ignores the fact that AIDS did not emerge in the days of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek or Louis Pasteur. Rather than compare the research on AIDS to disease research in earlier eras, it is more to the point to look at the chronology of the actual AIDS research. As it turned out, the AIDS virus was not a particularly difficult virus to find. The French took all of three weeks to discover LAV and had published their first paper on it within four months. This early publication lacked the certainty of a definitive discovery, but the French had enough evidence to assert they had found the cause of AIDS by the summer of 1983, seven or eight months into the research process.