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

by Randy Shilts

then, vast numbers of people knew better, but confronted with knowledge and the chance to do something, they usually did the wrong thing, if they did anything at all. At the time, their postures seemed like the right thing to do in order to preserve civil rights or, say, the economic viability of the blood industry. The problem, of course, was that such considerations constantly overshadowed concerns of medicine and public health.