December first. World AIDS Day. Protect yourself and get tested.

I read And The Band Played On (read the first 3 pages at the new Google Print), and it was absolutely excellent. It changed the way I thought about policy, the media, politicians, politics, and celebrity; it still has a lot of lessons that we can learn from. If you’re looking for a new book to read, pick this one up; it’s a page-turner.

I couldn’t help but wonder if we would have reacted to HIV if we only started to really see it now, as opposed to 20 years ago. Would the government continue to deny it? Would the NIH underfund and ignore it for years, only later trying to take credit for isolation and discovery of the virus? (The French discovered it.) Would the president keep from mentioning it for 6 years, or until 16,000 people had died from it, and thousands more were already infected?

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