This comprehensive survey of the early years of the AIDS epidemic came out at a time when I think people still thought that AIDS would be cured/vaccinable within a few years, and that attitude definitely colors the final chapters of the book, which just makes it more depressing. The whole book is about the failures in the early years of the AIDS crisis: the failure to identify what was going on, the failure to act, the failure to set politics aside.

It’s a well-researched and well-composed piece that blends personal stories of AIDS victims with a narrative of what happened from 1980-1987. The emphasis on San Francisco is heavy, because that’s where Shiltz was living and working, but I don’t really think that detracts from the book or the story, which is incredibly depressing and sobering.

And the Band Played On is a great handbook for what not to do in an epidemic. It’s about fear and misinformation, denial and confusion. Shilts did a great job of profiling the people involved, and of capturing the battles which raged between government agencies, groups within the gay community, researchers, and activists. I think that Shilts also really humanized the faces of AIDS in this book; no wonder it was such a huge deal when it came out.

I get the sense that people are forgetting about AIDS these days, treating it as a treatable nuisance and nothing more. The fact is that AIDS is a global killer; only residents of the First World can afford the incredibly costly and often painful treatments. And rates of new AIDS infections are on the rise, as are rates of other STIs, which suggests that people are not taking the risk seriously anymore. At the same time, we’re ignoring other quietly growing pandemics, like the rise of multi-drug resistant syphilis, gonorrhea, and other STIs which were, for a time, pretty easy to treat.

This book is about the end of an age of sexual innocence, and it’s a bit eerie to think that some people seem to be returning to that age, blissfully unaware that there are snakes in the garden now.

Demographics:

And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts. Published 1987, 630 pages. Health/history/sociology.