The Secret Epidemic
The Story of AIDS and Black America
by Jacob LevensonWhen AIDS first broke out, it was seen as a Gay Related Immune Deficiency, and so gay white men where the people who mobilized and the people who received aid. But the infection rate of blacks in America is more than seven times that of whites. The spread of AIDS is spurred not only by drugs like heroin, which are injected with needles that are often contaminated, but also by drugs such as cocaine, whose users are compelled towards promiscuity.
The treatment of AIDS within the black community is hampered from many directions. Funding for treatment is directed disproportionately at those areas which had large numbers of AIDS cases fifteen years ago, as well as at cities, leaving those in rural areas underfunded. Stigma is attached to AIDS due to its association with drugs and gays, and in religious and homophobic communities, members are loath to acknowledge their infection. Blacks do not want to go to clinics associated with gays. The federal government refuses to fund a needle exchange program.
This book opens with the story of two teenagers in rural Alabama who find out that they have AIDS through their rejection from a blood donation program. That chapter is followed by one about the integration of a program on AIDS studies, followed by another case history of a woman who contracts AIDS. Moving in a manner akin to a suspense novel, Levenson shows us people with AIDS, the people related to them, their caseworkers, the factors involved in the spread of AIDS, and the politics related to race and to AIDS.
Serious reading.
