Jonathan Engel

Although this book is a little over a decade old, most of its history is still relevant to the equation when one speaks of HIV/AIDS. The history of the male-homosexual community combined with the history of IV-drug-user community combined with Asian/African transmissions is still locked in many of the same patterns that were present in 2006. Engel does a strong job of telling their stories and in so doing, telling the story of one of the worst plagues in recent history.

The saddest thing about AIDS is that it preys upon some of our outcast peoples: IV drug users, male homosexuals, prostitutes, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia. Perhaps it is our fault for casting them out, but these populations doo not need additional stigma to be heaped upon them. But stigma, HIV/AIDS brought on.

This book highlights the simple fact that transmission of HIV is simple: One only needs to be part of an at-risk group, like someone who shares needles, engages in sex with many sexual partners, or engages in anal sex. Preventing the transmission of HIV is as simple as stopping those practices or using techniques to sanitize them.

It is sad that Reagan did not slow or stamp out the disease in the earliest years as this book well attests. HIV eradication is a long way away, but at least HAART treatment covers much of the infected, at least in the Western world. Africa and Asia still suffer from not being able to afford HAART treatment.

If you care about the outcast and those not in the center of society, this book is for you.
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Engel is thorough, journalistic, and documents everything he says thoroughly. This is both the strength and the weakness of the book. Facts are delivered relentlessly. Unless one is already a student of this global crisis, one will unquestionably learn a great deal. Hardly a paragraph goes by without statistics being delivered, and one will be astonished when the book ends approximately 2/3 of the way through the volume, but the entire last third of the book is end notes.

However, the delivery is so dry and unemotional, that I didn't feel as in touch with the victims, the health care workers, the scientists, or anyone else as I would have liked. They were all primarily reduced to numbers. Those numbers could be quite shocking, revealing, and upsetting. But I would have liked the chapters to be broken up with a few personal stories, to give a human dimension to a very human drama.… (más)