And The Band Played On

In San Francisco, Cleve Jones enjoys the Super Bowl. He finds another younger gentleman, Todd Coleman, attractive, and they hang out. Later, Cleve hears from his friend that Todd has AIDS. When he confronts Todd about his duty to let his partners know, he shrugs it off by stating: “They say at the Shanti Project that it's important for me to have sex” (518). Cleve is disheartened by this response.

In Paris, Bill is accompanied by his friend, Sharon Johnson, to visit Dr. Dominique Dormant about HPA-23 trials. Although the doctor warns that this is not a cure and that once off the drug, the virus will return, Bill still wants to try it.

On the other hand, a federal hiring freeze prevents the NCI from creating an AIDS research program that would allow the experimentation of every possible drug for infected patients. This frustrating situation causes Francis to complain, “We don't need more meetings. We need labs, and we need money” (520).  

At a conference in New York City, doctors, experts, and leading researchers on AIDS are nervous about the results between HTLV and LAV, as they appear “too identical” (528). They are distressed because the similarities between the “isolates of LAV and HTLV-III were supposed to have been taken seventeen months apart from two different men living on two different continents," prompting a veteran reporter to ask: “Are you suggesting that Gallo swiped his virus from the French” (529)? Montagnier is uncomfortable to accuse Gallo, but his suspicions are revealed to be correct. Gallo and Secretary Heckler make excuses to be absent.

In New York, Larry's play is in rehearsal. For him, he hopes that “he might accomplish as a playwright what he had failed to do as an activist to move New York and its gay community into action against AIDS” (531), especially at a time when Health Commissioner David Sencer refuses to have anything to do with “feeding panic” (533) and chooses to disregard the epidemic as a crisis. Under Sencer, the whole state spent “about $1 million a year” (533), and he is vague about where the money is spent. He also denies being aware of any AIDS-related data in New York.

In Washington DC, Congressman Henry Waxman and Ted Weiss are pushing for more funding, attention, and research for AIDS, while the Reagan Administration ignores the issue as “a statistic that they hope will go away” (535). The release of a report drafted by the Office of Technology Assessment outlines the failures of the government as the AIDS death toll increases and shows the budget cuts of at least “$10 million reductions that the administration sought for AIDS funding” (535). Congressional Aide Tim Westmoreland hopes that this report will be covered by the media to show the “administration’s duplicity on AIDS policy” (535). However, in the days to come, the report barely garners any media coverage.

In Paris, the situation becomes dire as more and more Americans are arriving at the Pasteur Institute to test HPA-23. This exodus creates tensions between the two governments, as American officials believe that the French have motives in introducing the drug while the French are angry that the Americans are not responsible for the health of their citizens because of expenditures.

Secretary Heckler announces the Abbott test, which is to be distributed across blood banks and plasma centers to aid in screening hepatitis and other diseases. Although the test is “95 percent sensitive, meaning it would detect 19 in 20 people infected with a virus” (540), it did not alleviate the fears of many gay leaders, who thought the test could be misused for discriminatory purposes.

The test raises tensions across cities. In New York, AIDS activists are still grappling over bathhouse closures and appalled at the open attitude of those on the West Coast for the antibody testing. In San Francisco, Larry Bush, Assemblyman Art Agnos’s aide, aims to create legislation that would secure the confidentiality of the test result. In New York City, gay leaders opposed homosexual men taking the test due to fears of doing so being a civil liberties violation. At the same time, Health Commissioner Sencer files an order declaring that no lab in the city would be permitted to conduct the tests except for scientific research. A person could not even take the test for personal reasons and “[p]erhaps the most amazing aspect of Dr. Sencer’s order was that it was completely ignored in the local press” (543).

In San Francisco, rumors abound of “a big movie star” (543) getting treated for AIDS. Possible suspects include Burt Reynolds, Rock Hudson, and even Ronald Reagan's son, Ron, Jr. Meanwhile, Cathy Borchelt’s family is preparing a lawsuit against the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank. In their lawsuit, they claim that the blood industry “was negligent in not moving to do something about AIDS even after it was aware of the problem (547).

In Paris, Dr. Jacques Leibowitch starts screening Parisians at random, and finds that at least 1 in 200 is infected with AIDS. With these statistics, the French government finally announces that it requires all donated blood to be tested. 

At the First International Conference on Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Don Francis is called a “Nazi” (548). Francis points out that people who are infected should only be having relations with people who are infected and those who are not infected should have sex with only people that they know to not be infected. Although Francis does not push for mandatory testing, he wishes that civil rights guarantees be put in place to encourage people to test. He stresses: “There aren't very many viruses in the history of man that kill one-tenth of the people they infect” (549).Mark Conant listens to Francis's talk, and he agrees with him. Later, Francis expresses his excitement to Conant over his transfer to San Francisco, which some federal government officials call an “exile”(551).

At the conference, Jim Curran states that AIDS is present in “every major city in the developed world” (551). In addition, the tensions between Montagnier and Gallo become evident across the scientific community. While Gallo attributes the “surprising genetic comparison between LAV and HTLV-III by saying that the Parisian gay men from whom LAV was culled had had sexual contacts in New York, implying that he had picked up the same strain of the virus" (554). In the meantime, Montagnier no longer calls it a part of the family of the leukemia virus, but instead part of the lentivirus family, as he asserted earlier. Through the conference, journalists can see that for the first time, the administration's “number-one health priority” (555) is false rhetoric.

In New York, Larry's play opens to an applauding, full house and through the drama, he brings the issue at last to a broader audience. Hours before the performance, Mayor Koch shifted the responsibility for AIDS planning from Health Commissioner Sencer to Deputy Mayor Victor Botnick to plan “for coordinated care and long-term facilities that had been proposed years before by AIDS clinicians” (556). Instead of looking at his past shortcomings, Koch, who is up for reelection, tries to divert attention to the city “already spending $31 million on AIDS” (556). Although Paul Popham hears about Larry's play and knows that there is a character based on him, he is waiting to hear about the purple spot on his neck. The doctor tells him that he has Kaposi’s sarcoma.

Cleve Jones leave San Francisco and decides to go to Hawaii, “to enjoy life again” (561). He tries to confront his drinking problem and admits to himself that even if he survives AIDS, he may not survive his alcohol addiction. He joins a rehabilitation group.

In Paris, Bill is miserable. Representative Sala Burton takes him off the payroll after learning he is out of the country. His friends create a fundraiser to help in his present and future costs. However, because his body is no longer responding to HPA-23, doctors want him “to start taking isoprinosine, a drug believed to act as an immune system booster” (562). Although Bill continues to write angry letters about the lack of treatment programs in the US, the federal government continues to be apathetic, as “it could not permit more than a handful of patients” (563) access to drugs for the treatment of AIDS.

In San Francisco, Francis Borchelt’s situation deteriorates. On June 10, her family takes her to the hospital and after performing her last rites, she goes blind and loses mental facilities. The blood bank lawyers try to reschedule their appointment when they find out that Francis is in the hospital, which angers Cathy. A few days later, Francis passes away.

On June 21, Mother Teresa comes to visit AIDS patients at George Washington University Hospital after accepting her Medal of Freedom from President Reagan, who at this point, has “yet to acknowledge the disease” (567). During the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, the gay community assembles itself as one to fight against AIDS and proves that “gay political strength continued to increase”(570). 

Representative Henry Waxman pushes Secretary Heckler and the Reagan Administration for further funds for AIDS research. Despite the discoveries and data, insufficient funding is revealed to be an obstacle in studying AIDS. Gallo “complained bitterly that over a year after the administration spotlighting of his HTLV-III discovery, the government had still produced no significant increase in funds for his lab” (572).

In California, Rock Hudson arrives to do a segment with Doris Day. His haggard appearance inspires rumors, and when he returns to Los Angeles, he collapses. Hudson decides a few weeks later to go to Paris for the HPA-23 treatment, and upon arrival, collapses again at the hotel. He is shifted to the American hospital, where the doctors are only made of aware of his heart conditions, and not of his AIDS complications.

In Washington DC, a subpoena for the Reagan Administration’s record on AIDS is being prepared. Heckler redirects funds that increase spending for the next year by 48% to show that AIDS is indeed a “number-one health priority” (574) before the subpoena. Doctors and researchers are called in at the AIDS hearings of Representative Waxman’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment to show the government’s “low funding levels” (574). Although they achieve an increase in research funds, it is not without a fight.

News of Rock Hudson being fatally ill and having AIDS emerges. While in Paris, Hudson receives a call from President Reagan wishing him recovery. Because of the possibility that Rock Hudson could have AIDS, media coverage becomes focused on the disease and experts are roped in for interviews. Representative Waxman “was delighted with the idea, especially since it marked the first time any major network show would devote significant time to discussing the federal government's role in the epidemic” (576).

At the GMHC, Director Richard Dune took this sudden media interest as an opportunity to put further pressure on Mayer Koch and his administration for additional funding for AIDS projects. At the hospital in Paris, once officials learn Rock Hudson has AIDS, they order that the actor leave. His chartered jet takes him back to the US and he is placed at the UCLA Medical Center, under the care of Dr. Michael Gottlieb. After years of fighting for AIDS to be recognized as a crisis and witnessing deaths, Gottlieb realizes that this situation could be the attention that the epidemic needs. With Hudson’s consent, he announces a simple statement: “Mr. Hudson is being evaluated and treated for complications of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome” (582).