Every generation has its own disease that moves from doomed to hopeful

It sometimes seem that every generation has its disease. In earlier generations it was Tuberculosis, in the 40’s and 50’s the fear and the scourge of Polio gripped the nation.

In the 80’s and 90’s, the fear and reality of AIDS overwhelmed the national consciousness.

When we look at these diseases...the death tolls from them, the way they were perceived, the medical mystery, the research, the treatment and the movement towards a cure...we learn a great deal, not just about the march of medicine, but about the culture of the particular time. We see how disease evolves and what it says about our collective character.

That’s the world that my Dr. Susan Ball writes about in Voices in the Band: A Doctor, Her Patients, and How the Outlook on AIDS Care Changed from Doomed to Hopeful

My conversation with Dr. Susan Ball:

Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival

From the founding of the republic and the debates over slavery, until the passage of the Civil Right act in l964, took nearly 200 years. With respect to the civil right issues of our time, from the Stonewall Riots in 1969, to the President of the United States supporting same sex marriages, took 43 tumultuous years.

During that time, three generations would engage in the struggle. A plague would descend upon and become part of the struggle and take the lives of many in the movement. Public opinion would go from shock and horror to love and acceptance. As the saying goes, oh what a strange trip it was.

Sean Strub has been a kind of Zelig of gay rights movement. He was there at all the key moments, with all the key players. He was on the ramparts, in the living rooms and hospital rooms and courtrooms along the way. He now gives us a memoir of his life and of the times we’ve all shared, in his new book Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival.

My conversation with Sean Strub: