Now available exclusively in e-book form, How AIDS Ends: Fifteen Visionaries Write the Final Chapter on AIDS (which costs 99 cents on Kindle) serves as the light at the end of the tunnel. The e-book was produced in conjunction with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
It was in July 1981 that the New York Times first reported on Kaposi's Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that had suddenly begun appearing in young gay men. No one could have foreseen the horror that was to come. For most of the next two decades, hundreds of thousands of people would succumb to the strange new illness that came to be known as AIDS. Although others were affected, gay men were the primary casualties.
In How AIDS Ends, 15 survivors recall those tragic years. They also illustrate how we got through that period, and show us where we are now.
Among the contributors is Jeanne White Ginder. During the late 1980s, Ginder's late son Ryan White, a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS through tainted blood, became the poster boy for children with AIDS. After being denied entry into a public school, young Ryan spent his final years educating the public about his disease. He opened hearts and minds. As a result of his courage, celebrities like Elton John became involved in the fight against AIDS.
The e-book underscores the magnitude of the loss suffered by the gay community. Scott Wiener, who currently serves as an openly gay member of San Francisco's board of supervisors, writes eloquently about coming out as a young gay college student in New Jersey two decades ago. The young Wiener had no gay male role models to look up to, as much of the previous generation had died. Few of them had reached middle age. Supervisor Wiener writes of the need for their to be new role models to serve the needs of LGBT youth who are coming out today.
One of the new role models is contributor Cleve Jones. In his own youth, Jones was an intern to the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. During the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis was escalating to it's peak levels, Jones co-founded the AIDS Memorial Quilt. These days, Jones, who himself lives with the AIDS virus, meets regularly with HIV-infected youth, offering the support and encouragement they need.
"While we've seen little progress in the search for a vaccine or cure, an end to AIDS remains possible," Jones told Windy City Times. "Recent studies confirm that HIV positive individuals who are successfully being treated with anti-retroviral medications are unlikely to infect their sexual partners. Treatment equals prevention. So the challenge is to eliminate all remaining barriers that prevent HIV positive people from learning their status and accessing treatment."
How AIDS Ends was edited by Reilly O'Neal, who currently serves as the editor of Beta, the prevention and treatment magazine of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
"This is a time of true hope with huge breakthroughs in prevention and treatment," O'Neal said. "It's a time for hard work and innovation. Those breakthroughs aren't enough by themselves. We need the funding, the political leadership, and the collective commitment to put those tools to use for everybody, including those who's health is jeopardized by stigma, homophobia, racism, sexism, poverty, homelessness, discriminatory laws and marginalization. By asking these 15 visionaries to write the final chapter on AIDS—to share their perspectives on the past and their visions for how AIDS ends—we wanted to help keep up the momentum and make that future without AIDS a reality for everyone."
How AIDS Ends: Fifteen Visionaries Write the Final Chapter on AIDS is currently available in digital form at Amazon.com and Kobobooks.com It will also be available at iTunes and Barnesandnoble.com .
