AIDS Is Not Over: Tim Barrus: NY Times
Tim Barrus: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/health/aids-cure-london-patient.html?comments#permid=30899203
I have friends from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They will not get a cure. They are dying. I have friends here in Appalachia who will not get a cure. They are dying. I know a married couple who live in Samara, Russia. They will not get a cure. They are dying. I am close to a young man in Caracas whose meds have run out. I know a gregarious truck driver in Abuja who will not get a cure. He only has a few days left. I know a Somali woman in Mombasa who will not get a cure nor will her children. I know a young man in Sana’a. There is no medicine in Yemen. I know a female prostitute in Surat. She can barely afford the rent in the brothel. I know more than several 15-year-old boy sex workers in Ft. Lauderdale who charge a little bit more to their customers, almost all of whom are married men, if the customer does not want to wear a condom. These boys are the hard to reach. They do not know their status and never will. Four of them can barely make it out of the beds they sleep in. I know a family in Chiapas who mourn in a graveyard every day. I have worked in AIDS on and off for decades. I’m still there. I knew men who lived on the streets of San Francisco. Allow me to count the names. But why. I have always said that when the cure comes, we all know who will get it. We all know who won’t. I wrote a book once called Just Before the Cure. I burned the manuscript. America’s collective consciousness lasts four days. Why bother. AIDS is not over. It never will be.