And The Band Played On

When the CDC and NCI begin to work together, tempers flare. Although the NCI is committed to researching the epidemic, they are condescending of the “socially conscious CDC staffers”; the CDC researchers, meanwhile, think the NCI to be “concerned with little more than personal glory” (350). These feelings are evident when Gallo berates a junior researcher for working on his samples without him but later apologizes to Francis for creating a scene.

The CDC requires that “all states and territorial health officials to report all known cases to Atlanta” (351). However, anxiety increases when hate crimes against homosexual men occur and prejudices arise, including an attempt to prevent the National Gay Rodeo in Nevada. The government’s response is to create a national hotline which with only six operators “took [between] 10,000 and 13,000 callers a day” (353).

At the San Francisco General Hospital, a hospital ward is redecorated as the AIDS Ward for the city’s affected patients, led by a gay clinical nurse specialist, Cliff Morrison, and his team of volunteer nurses. It is the only ward at the time whose “facilities clearly would benefit both patients and doctors, who were still struggling to understand the grisly array of AIDS complications” (355).

The State of California moves quickly to provide the funds for AIDS researchers at the University of California, as requested by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. However, the university administration enacts its revenge for the “aggressive move” (357) by those like Conant and does not release funds directly, requiring every interested party to submit grant proposals.

In Washington DC, Reagan’s budget “called for a $300,000 cut in AIDS funding at the Centers for Disease Control for the next year” (359). There are still no AIDS-prevention campaigns or strategies. At the Weiss hearings, the blood industry also denies that AIDS is a problem for them when Dr. Bove states that only “a small number of AIDS cases turn out to be transfusion related” (361). At the Irwin Blood Bank, a male blood donor who says “he was not a member of a high-risk group for AIDS” donates his blood (361).

In San Francisco, Frances Borchelt is a getting hip-replacement surgery in time for her son’s wedding. Without her knowledge, she receives a blood transfusion for the loss of blood during her operation—blood that belonged to a blood donor who lied about his AIDS status.

In New York City, Heckler, in a public-relations move, “wanted to be seen taking the hand of an AIDS victim, touching him” (363). With the amount of anxiety around the epidemic increasing, she wants to ease the nation. She announces that Reagan would request another $22 million for AIDS funding, but the money would be appropriated from other existing health programs.

As Francis tries to create a solid retrovirus lab at the CDC, he wants to hire a retrovirologist from Gallo’s lab, Dr. V. S. Kalyanaraman (Kaly). Although Kaly intends to work with the CDC, Gallo intimidates him into staying at the NCI in Bethesda. At the same time, Gallo believes the CDC does not need another retrovirus lab and refuses to collaborate, paranoid that he will receive no credit: “He had voiced the fear to a number of close colleagues that the CDC was plotting to find the cause of AIDS themselves” (367).

On the same day, Gallo chooses to withhold cooperation, Dr. Art Ammann, a pediatric immunologist, announces that AIDS researchers were punished for committing a “bureaucratic offense” against the university hierarchy (368), which Conant confirms by leaking a memo. Without the funds, the research is delayed. Afterward, however, Amman is denied of all funding, so he moves to work in the private sector.

In Paris, the French team is finding “higher levels of LAV antibodies than Robert Gallo had reported with HTLV-I” (371) and are conducting their blood tests. Despite their progress, most important scientific journals were American and not interested in publishing French research.

Morgan MacDonald is transferred from a private hospital treating him in Gainesville, Florida and left on the floor of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation when he runs out of Medicaid benefits. “Unable to even raise his head” (374), Mayor Feinstein condemns the act, with a Florida Health Department spokesman later admitting, “We are having problems in Florida because medical professionals are reluctant to provide care because they know so little about AIDS” (375).

On the other hand, the work on AIDS education in San Francisco results in a plan that “did little more than restate what the city was already doing” (376). Supervisor Harry Britt corners Dr. Silverman on how he plans to treat the epidemic as an emergency and not “an outbreak of psoriasis” (376).

By early 1983, the gay community embraces a “new toned-down gay life-style,” although many still keep to their old ways, including visits to the bathhouses (377). In New York City, officials have done nothing to combat AIDS. By the end of the year, only $24,500 is spent on AIDS education and other services. Larry writes another appeal in which he accuses Mayor Koch and The New York Times for their inaction toward the epidemic. In the meantime, he also finishes writing a play, which he calls The Normal Heart. The dramatic work depicts the AIDS crisis in New York.

At the annual awards dinner of the San Francisco Press Club, the nonchalance of the media has become apparent and acceptable as “AIDS remained something of a dirty little joke” (384). For most news organizations, AIDS was not a serious epidemic that deserved a critical journalistic eye, and due to their disinterest, “[n]ews coverage and the lack of it left a profound mark on local public policy” (385).

At the NCI labs in Bethesda, although Gallo is making progress, he is frustrated because his staff cannot grow the virus that caused AIDS because “[i]t kept killing his cell lines” (386). In Paris, “the Parisian doctors found that the American scientific establishment was reluctant to take their work seriously” (388), even though they had the necessary evidence to show that they had isolated the virus that led to the epidemic. In a chance encounter at a conference in Tokyo, Francoise Barre runs into Bob Gallo, and they share a taxi. Gallo says that he may have discovered the retrovirus and that “[i]t might even prove to be similar to LAV” (388).

On November 7, according to Matt’s journal, Gary is in the hospital with pneumonia and a multitude of infections. Gary hallucinates an apparition of a deceased friend who tells him there is nothing to fear and that “[y]ou’ll like it here” (390).

After the World Health Organization conference in Geneva, the “disease had been reported in thirty-three nations on five continents” (392) and continued to spread. Later, at dinner, Francis asks Curran and Brandt, “What went wrong with AIDS” (393)?

At San Francisco General Hospital, the AIDS Ward is “the most entertaining unit in the hospital” (394) where volunteer groups, charity efforts, nurses and others would cater to the dying patients. Even though the ward is always filled and has the most deaths in all of the hospital, AIDS patients “clamored” to be there.

In DC, the Intergovernmental Relations and Human Resources Subcommittee chaired by Representative Ted Weiss produces a report titled, “The Federal Response to AIDS” which becomes the “only comprehensive investigation of federal AIDS policy yet undertaken by anybody” (397). The report outlines the major problems faced in dealing with AIDS, namely highlighting the qualified and equipped scientists who “are subjected to severe political and fiscal constraints especially in the times of shrinking federal budgets for public health programs” (398).

In New York City, the number of children and babies infected with AIDS has risen, and with no strategy put in place by the city, they are left to die at hospitals. All the health officials and medical personnel “continued to minimize the severity of the AIDS problem” (400), with Manhattan gay doctors not even reporting many of their cases to the CDC.

By Christmas, Gallo announces he discovered the retrovirus behind AIDS. In the CDC offices in Atlanta, Dr. Dale Lawrence, in conjunction with the CDC statistician, finds the answer to the incubation period for AIDS, which is “along the lines of five years,” suggesting that the virus had “spread for years before anyone even knew it existed” (402).