The band played on

Starting July 4th 1976, The Band Played On outlines the response to the AIDS crisis in the US and elsewhere. Hindsight makes for difficult reading.

“Nineteen eighty-four was the year of the films Amadeus and Purple Rain. Tina Turner made a dramatic comeback, inspiring New Year’s Eve consumes for drag queens across the country. And it seemed that every year-in-review piece on the television newscasts featured huge American flags waving at the U.S olympics in Los Angeles and at the Republican National Convention, scored to the music of the year’s top-selling album, Born in the USA. This Bruce Springsteen album was a collection of songs about the ignored Americans who were left out of the American dream, stranded in despairing lives of unfulfilled aspirations…On December 31, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 7,699 Americans were dead or dying of a disease that had never been hear of when President Reagan was sworn in during his first term”

“In the United States no issue frustrated AIDS clinicians and researchers more in the early months of 1985 more than the lack of experimental treatments to offer AIDS patients. In no area of AIDS research was the paucity of funds having a more devastating impact. Dr. Donna Mildvan at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York has receiving five calls a day, from lovers, friends and relatives of AIDS patients, pleading for any treatment, that might work. A day rarely went by without some mother sobbing, “Please, doctor, save my son.” Officials at the National Cancer Institute assured everyone that they were screening every possible drug for experimental trials in AIDS patients. What they didn’t reveal was that this federal screening program consisted of Dr. Sam Broder and two technicians; a federal hiring freeze prevented the NCI from augmenting this program.”

“The cuts came at an inopportune time. Secretary Margaret Heckler had let it be known to gay leaders that she did not want to use her political capital to fight for AIDS funding in the administration when she knew that Congress was going to allocate more funds anyway. As it was, Heckler’s stock in the administration had dropped precipitously. In Virginia, Margaret Heckler’s husband of thirty-one years was suing for divorce, claiming, among other things, that Margaret had ceased having marital relations with him twenty-two years ago. Margaret, who was a devout Roman Catholic, had refused to get a divorce, he said, because she felt it would hurt her political career. Gay leaders were aghast at the thought that someone who apparently had had no sex since 1963 was presiding over the government’s AIDS fight”

[BGW245] 1987