Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introso – EL
Reaction Paper
“And the band played on” was a story of the discovery of the
AIDS virus. From the early days in 1978 when numerous San Francisco
gays began dying from unknown causes, to the identification of the HIV
virus. Researchers began discerning a mysterious new disease that
apparently affects only homosexual males. American and French
researcher team manage to identify and name the disease which is
AIDS working separately but only before already a lot of people has
been infected by the disease.
One of the two major issues that affected me the most is how it
took so long for the government and other faction included (like the
Blood bank) to take actions for the disease to at least be controlled. We
can see in the film that the blood bank could not even approve to
spend money in making tests on the bloods they are offering to check
whether it has the disease or not, also public bath houses at first was
unable to be closed although there are reasonable doubts that it could
be the main cause of the spread in the virus. I could not believe that in
these severe cases these factions manages to think only about their
selves and for their well being only. I believe that the effect of the
disease could have been controlled if he government had taken its
action sooner. Another issue that called my attention was how the
French and American research team had conflicts in resolving the
identification of HIV that lead to the delay. Both of them should be
working together in defeating the disease for the good of the whole,
instead they opt to clash over who discovered the virus first holding up
the research. Conflicts like these must be resolve quickly in these
extreme cases to benefit the whole society.