A definitive look at the AIDS epidemic
In her 1978 essay, ``Illness as Metaphor," Susan Sontag savaged the use of metaphors in discussing diseases like cancer. ``The most truthful way of regarding illness -- and the healthiest way of being ill -- is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking," she wrote.
Ten years later, she made the same point in ``AIDS and its Metaphors." Sontag was on the money on both occasions. Has there ever been a disease more freighted with symbolism -- divine punishment for sinful behavior for starters -- than AIDS?
``It is the most political disease I've ever seen," says Mervyn Silverman, former president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
Most governments now confront the disease, however belatedly, in terms of epidemiology rather than denial and moralistic cant. That's the good news. And the bad? Seventy million infected and 22 million dead.
``I'm not going to see the end of this epidemic," says David Ho, the researcher who worked on the ``triple cocktail" of drugs to reduce AIDS for many to a survivable disease. ``And it's also pretty clear that my children won't see the end of this epidemic."
Ho and Silverman figure prominently in the ``
``Frontline" explores the origins of AIDS, its epidemiology, its politics, its cultural fractures, its future. It takes us to 16 countries and talks to all the right people. Kudos to series producer and reporter Renata Simone, along with William Cran and Greg Barker, for leading this omnibus effort.
That said, the question looms: Is there anything fundamentally new that anyone who has followed the disease's trajectory doesn't know? And this: Who is going to watch four hours of ``The Age of AIDS " in the age of ``American Idol"?
Everyone connected in any way to the disease will. Others who have lost track of its history may too. It would be nice to think the ignorant, particularly the young, will watch. After all, says one AIDS survivor on the show, ``This generation doesn't know what an 80-pound, purple-spotted man looks like." But then ``Frontline" is up against the likes of MySpace.com.
What this show does exceedingly well is invest the entire AIDS story with coherence. It descends vertically into the science and horizontally across global societies. It weaves disparate, seemingly unrelated discoveries into a timeline: the early cases of gay men in Los Angeles, the infected IV drug users in the Bronx, the heterosexual transmission in Africa, the lethal threat to hemophiliacs from tainted blood donations.
``Frontline" names names. We see the shameful failure of the Reagan administration to confront the disease. (Under fellow conservative Margaret Thatcher, in contrast, a needle exchange program took root in Britain.) George Bush senior wasn't much better. Nelson Mandela, facing an AIDS epidemic, was largely AWOL. His successor, South African president Thabo Mbeki, has been appalling in his denial of a link between HIV and AIDS.
There are heroes too. Big ones like the late Jonathan Mann, a global force against AIDS at the World Health Organization. And smaller figures such as Franklin Graham, the evangelical son of Billy Graham whose mission work in Africa brought an admirable sensibility to the AIDS crisis absent in the broader evangelical community.
``The Age of AIDS" succeeds most when it preaches least. Preaching is inevitable around such a loaded subject, but what keeps us glued to the marathon documentary is its acute examination of what happened. When gifted journalists simply tell us what happened, as they do here, we appreciate the power of the craft as well as the enormity of the subject.
