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

by Randy Shilts

Even before the meeting opened, however, it was clear that each group had come with its own agenda, and on most lists, stopping the potential spread of AIDS was secondary. Blood bankers were openly skeptical of the CDC claim that AIDS could be transmitted through blood. Some FDA officials remained unconvinced that AIDS even existed. Gay groups already had condemned any call for screening of blood donors as “scapegoating” homosexuals. The San Francisco Coordinating Committee of Gay and Lesbian Services, chaired by Pat Norman, issued a policy paper asserting that donor screening was “reminiscent of miscegenation blood laws that divided black blood from white” and “similar in concept to the World War II rounding up of Japanese-Americans in the western half of the country to minimize the possibility of espionage.”