And the Band Played On (page 155)
This excerpt centers on Marc Conant in May 1982, a doctor who took the emerging epidemic seriously. This excerpt shows Conant's thoughts on some of the gay men who were spreading the new virus in spite of the emerging information out there, and it also shows Conant's concerns at the time about lack of funding from government. (caps are mine)
"All day, people had been calling him about the cluster study, and every terror Conant had conceived on that April morning A YEAR BEFORE when he had first heard about Ken Horne now seemed realized. He immediaely recognized Patient Zero as the suave Quebecois airline steward who had come into his office the month before. He was the type of man everyone wanted. What everyone had wanted was bringing them death. Quite literally, Conant thought.
There were other worries. The sum total of all Conant's funding pleas was a $50,000 grant from the American Cancer Society. That was just enough to afford one harried secretary to coordinate the increasing numbers of patients using the KS clinic.
Nine months had passed since the National Cancer Institute conference in Bethesda, and still there had not been a single gesture to intimate that the NCI was prepared to release funds.
The United States, Contant thought, had the know-how and resources to conquer this disease. The greatest scientific technology waited in the world's best-funded laboratories. People could be warned through a mass media network that could reach into virtually every citizen's home within a matter of minutes. This wasn't some Third World country, for Christ's sake."
This excerpt centers on Marc Conant in May 1982, a doctor who took the emerging epidemic seriously. This excerpt shows Conant's thoughts on some of the gay men who were spreading the new virus in spite of the emerging information out there, and it also shows Conant's concerns at the time about lack of funding from government. (caps are mine)
"All day, people had been calling him about the cluster study, and every terror Conant had conceived on that April morning A YEAR BEFORE when he had first heard about Ken Horne now seemed realized. He immediaely recognized Patient Zero as the suave Quebecois airline steward who had come into his office the month before. He was the type of man everyone wanted. What everyone had wanted was bringing them death. Quite literally, Conant thought.
There were other worries. The sum total of all Conant's funding pleas was a $50,000 grant from the American Cancer Society. That was just enough to afford one harried secretary to coordinate the increasing numbers of patients using the KS clinic.
Nine months had passed since the National Cancer Institute conference in Bethesda, and still there had not been a single gesture to intimate that the NCI was prepared to release funds.
The United States, Contant thought, had the know-how and resources to conquer this disease. The greatest scientific technology waited in the world's best-funded laboratories. People could be warned through a mass media network that could reach into virtually every citizen's home within a matter of minutes. This wasn't some Third World country, for Christ's sake."
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