And the band played on.....going to the roots of discovery of HIV/AIDS

Yesterday was first of December, and it  was the World AIDS day. It was  a day to reflect on  what  so far has been done in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This year's theme is "Focus, Partner, Achieve: An AIDS-free Generation." The world was talking and is continuing to talk on social media about the day using the hashtag #WAD2014. To commemorate this day, I watched a movie that describes the way the HIV virus was discovered and the whole multilayer story around reactions of the scientific community, the gay community, the politicians and the general public to this epidemic.

The movie presents the early years of AIDS crisis in the US. It describes the initial efforts of the scientists at the center for Disease control (CDC) in Atlanta to identify the cause, mode of transmission and methods of fighting the epidemic. It presents the battles of two scientists at CDC;Dr. Don Francis, the young lead investigator, and his boss, Dr. Jim Curran.  A second facet of the story centers on the gay community in San Francisco, and the balancing act gay advocates and public health officials in the city have to do to protect the gay population from what is largely seen initially as a gay disease, yet not further stigmatize and suppress an already largely stigmatized and suppressed gay population in the US. A third facet of the story centers on the work by academics to identify what many believe is a retrovirus cause of the disease.

Finally, the film deals with the rivalry between Dr. Robert Gallo, the American virologist who previously discovered the first retrovirus and his French counterpart at the Pasteur Institute, Dr. Luc Montagnier, that led to disputed claims about who was first to identify the AIDS virus. Through these three facets, personal stories of individual AIDS victims are presented, at that early stage where there mortality rate was 100%

From the roots of the virus (1981) to Getting to Zero ( 2013) to "Focus, Partner, Achieve: An AIDS-free Generation ( 2014) , we might be going to the point when HIV infection will be a history just like small pox. This needs all the actors in the fight of the pandemic to have the same understanding on what ’’AIDS-free generation'' means.