How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed Aids

"This was a remarkable book—quite a chunky one, with a hell of a story to tell. David France was a gay man living in New York in the early 1980s, a young man and therefore sexually active. It’s really on three levels, the book. It’s a personal story of when the AIDS epidemic hit in ’82, ’83—how it ravaged his circle and the tragedy it represented to the personal relationships and the gay community in New York (and, by implication, gay communities anywhere). Secondly, it’s a societal story. It charts how a society, confronted by this medical emergency, had to confront its own prejudices. There was massive prejudice against homosexuals. And it charts the enlightenment—if I can use that word—that happened as a result. It’s not a catalyst for enlightenment that you would choose. It’s a terrible curse with the deaths and everything, but nevertheless. “There were campaigns, there was misunderstanding, there was bad behaviour on both sides. It’s an extraordinary narrative.” Thirdly, it’s a science and industrial story. Big Pharma had to come up with, if not a cure, at least a palliative, which we now have. People with AIDS have a good prognosis with a combination of antiretroviral drugs. The people in David France’s circle were the guinea pigs for the drug companies. They were also campaigning the government and the drug companies to get on with it and not make too many profits—all the arguments we had about antiretroviral drugs in South Africa, which has a terrible AIDS problem. But this is earlier, in the 80s. There were campaigns, there was misunderstanding, there was bad behaviour on both sides. It’s an extraordinary narrative. Now it turns out that the book was partly culled from the documentary he made of the same name, which he did first . A lot of the verbatim quotes in the book are from interviews he did for his documentary. For a long time people said to him, ‘There’s no market for this book, nobody wants the 80s hashed up again.’ But it’s a fantastic book, you’re swept along by the power of the narrative and the intensity of the way he describes his experience and the number of people who die who we get to know quite well. It’s a very, very powerful book. It also absolutely qualifies as an important book, which is one of the reasons it won. It tells a very important story. Yes. It’s still relevant medically and it’s still relevant in a societal sense, with prejudice and denial of the sexuality that people are apparently born with. There are religions and countries that still condemn homosexuality and imprison people for it. I published a book this year called The Empathy Instinct in which I quote that, since the revolution in 1979, 4,000 homosexuals have been put to death in Iran. It’s worth remembering that statistic. That tells you how important How to Survive a Plague is."