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

by Randy Shilts

By the time President Reagan had delivered his first speech on the epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease; 20,849 had died.

The most important good news was spelled AZT, the first treatment to interfere with the life cycle of the AIDS virus and extend the lives of patients. It was a primitive drug at best and had many harmful side effects. But it worked.

What hadn’t changed for Cleve was the dream itself; what they had fought for, what Harvey Milk had died for, was fundamentally right, Cleve thought. It had been a fight for acceptance and equality, against ignorance and fear. It was that fight that had brought Cleve to Washington on this day.

The numbers of AIDS cases measured the shame of the nation, he believed. The United States, the one nation with the knowledge, the resources, and the institutions to respond to the epidemic, had failed. And it had failed because of ignorance and fear, prejudice and rejection. The story of the AIDS epidemic was that simple, Cleve felt; it was a story of bigotry and what it could do to a