Quotes from Randy Shilts

How very American, he thought, to look at a disease as homosexual or heterosexual, as if viruses had the intelligence to choose between different inclinations of human behavior.

What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it…

Prejudice makes prisoners of both the hated and the hater.

We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union," said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn't resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, "And they won't, all right." In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: "You have AIDS—bang, bang, bang." The Soviets were not amused.

Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease, newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren't gay

Insanity triumphed because sane people were silent.

The bitter truth was that AIDS did not just happen to America—it was allowed to happen by an array of institutions, all of which failed to perform their appropriate tasks to safeguard the public health.

Don't offend the gays and don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic. Inspired by the best intentions, such arguments paved the road toward the destination good intentions inevitably lead.

There was no excuse, in this country and in this time, for the spread of a deadly new epidemic. For this was a time in which the United States boasted the world's most sophisticated medicine and the world's most extensive public health system, geared to eliminate such pestilence from our national life.

If you don't abide by scientific principles, chaos will ensue.

On June 21, AIDS patients at George Washington University Hospital opened their eyes to see a woman in a white linen gown moving among them. She wore no mask or gloves and was not afraid to approach their beds and ask the young men about their illness. Mother Teresa came to visit the AIDS patients directly from the White House, where President Reagan, who had yet to acknowledge the disease, had awarded her the Medal of Freedom.

Humans who have been subjected to a lifetime of irrational bigotry on the part of a mainstream society can be excused for harboring unreasonable fears.

In politics, the players jockey for power; in academia, they play for vanity, a far more compelling instinct that could conjure far more vindictive punishment.

The closeted homosexual is far less likely to demand fair or just treatment for his kind, because to do so would call attention to himself.

There was no excuse, in this country and in this time, for the spread of a deadly new epidemic.

The bathhouses weren't open because the owners didn't understand they were spreading death. They understood that. The bathhouses were open because they were still making money.

This is an infectious disease, Conant began. The CDC case-control study may offer some definitive word on how it was spread, but that research was stalled, probably for lack of resources. We are losing time, and time is the enemy in any epidemic. The disease is moving even if the government isn't.

The finding of AIDS in infants and children who are household contacts of patients with AIDS or persons with risks for AIDS has enormous implications with regard to ultimate transmissibility of this syndrome," Fauci says. "If routine close contact can spread the disease, AIDS takes on an entirely new dimension," he adds.

It was a truism to people active in the gay movement that the greatest impediments to homosexuals' progress often were not heterosexual bigots but closeted homosexuals.

and that it would come here too. Paul

When a London gay switchboard's lines broke down because they were so overwhelmed with AIDS calls, telephone company employees refused to fix them because they were afraid of contracting AIDS through the wiring.

Conant was worried too. He believed that the Mafia, who maintained strong links to bathhouses in other cities, was behind the quick changes in the health director's thinking.