And the Band Played On ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Nonfiction
US Publication: November 1, 1987
Print: 630 pages
Audio: 31 hours 44 minutes
Confetti Rating: 5 stars
REVIEW:
“And the Band Played On” = The deliberate masking or downplaying of an impending calamity by authorities.
This book almost brought me to my knees. Literally, at parts I wanted to fall to the ground under the weight of its sadness. While the individual stories of loss and suffering are heartbreaking, it’s the bureaucratic insanity that got to me.
Roger Gail Lyon: “This is not a political issue. This is a health issue. This is not a gay issue. This is a human issue. And I do not intend to be defeated by it. I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.”
Of course Lyon did actually die from AIDS, as did the author of this book (which I did not realize until I had finished it).
If you haven’t seen the 1993 HBO movie adaption, I highly recommend it. I’ve probably seen it at least a dozen times and own a copy of the DVD. Whether through print or film, everyone should know this story.
And on a final note, while I’m giving it five stars for numerous reasons, history has shown that Shilts got some of it wrong. Namely the finger pointing to Gaetan Dugas as “Patient Zero” of the epidemic. Dugas was labeled as Patient O (the letter O standing for “Outside California”), which was misprinted as Patient 0, which then became Patient Zero. He no doubt was an early carrier who knowingly and recklessly spread the disease, but that typo plus his unique name lead to the false understanding that he was the first person to bring AIDS to the US.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments.
Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.