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GUEST COLUMN |
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An Epidemic and the Triumph
of Universal Human Spirit
Dr. Abraham Verghese |
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| Exactly twenty years ago, the first cases of
what would turn out to be AIDS were reported in America. They
were reported in the weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report,
a newsletter from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that
goes to many physicians. The report titled "Pneumocystis
pneumonia-Los Angeles" was not even the lead article. I
was in training as a resident in medicine at the time, set on
a career in infectious disease. Little did I know that this
news would be the harbinger of a major change in the way we
practiced medicine;little did I know how many friends I would
lose to this disease, or how the world would literally be reshaped
by the epidemic.AIDS has claimed an estimated 21 million lives
worldwide in these twenty years. Unlike any other epidemic,
what made AIDS so different was the second "disease"
that traveled and still travels with it: the stigma of AIDS.By
the time the virus-now called HIV-had been discovered, I had
moved to a small town in Tennessee. My experience with AIDS
in that small town was, I realized later, a sample, a microcosmic
encounter of the larger story playing out all over the world.
If my first book MY OWN COUNTRY, which detailed that experience
in Tennessee, struck a chord, it was because the experience
I described was truly universal. |
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| There are milestones I remember vividly in those twenty years,
some personal, some global. 1983: my first patient, a young
gay man who as he was dying bemoaned the ostracism he perceived
from friends, nurses, doctors and society in general; 1984:
the discovery of HIV by Gallo and Montagnier (or Montagnier
and Gallo depending on who you believe) and the realization
shortly thereafter that the size of this epidemic was bigger
than anyone imagined; 1988: the San Francisco AIDS conference
where I saw a robust Randy Shilts (who died shortly after that);
1990 and the AIDS conference in Florence, Italy, where the mood
seemed that of despair; 1995 and the death of my dear friend
James Searcy; 1997: the advent of highly active antiretroviral
therapy (HAART) which transformed my clinic and saw Lazarus
like resurrections in some of my patients; 2001: after several
visits to Africa and India, where for the most part the story
seemed to be one of despair and hopelessness, visiting the Freedom
Foundation in Bangalore and seeing a unique model for the delivery
of AIDS care in the tropics (and indeed the Freedom Foundation
was picked as a model site by the UN for its unique approach
to the problem of HIV). |
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| There is so much more to be done but the tragedy of AIDS has
served as its own force of change. Science has changed and become
more responsive, more answerable to the public. Drug companies
are held morally accountable and forced to share and release
life-saving drugs. Governments are forced to acknowledge their
problems and respond accordingly. |
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| The launching of this new web portal for HIV is important,
a way of reminding ourselves that we are all connected, that
the nature of human suffering is universal and knows no boundaries.
(Perhaps this is why, some of the best AIDS researchers I know
have left the security of their positions in American institutions
and turned their sights to Africa and Asia, moved their families
and their work to where the problem is.) Let us hope that in
twenty years we can look back again and recount more milestones,
milestones that have to do with the triumph of the universal
human spirit. |
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| (All the views expressed in this column are entirely that
of the author.) |
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| About
the Author |
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