Reviews with content warning for Death - How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS

Reviews tagging 'Death'

How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France

15 reviews

therat8's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative sad slow-paced

4.75

Must read. Slow and ultimately a little too long. I think everyone should try to read this even if they don't finish it because reading even part of it would be very informing of the aids crisis

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atlantisblauw's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

5.0

One of the best books I've read. It's interesting to learn more about history this way, to understand what things actually mean for human lives. It's quite heartbreaking sometimes, these people had to go through so much. They lost so many people, they were so sick, and then got blamed for it and fired and lost their houses. It's unimaginable.

On the one hand, we've come a long way: things have definitely improved when it comes to prevention, treatment, human rights. (Although gay people still can't donate blood.). On the other hand it's kind of depressing that on a larger scale, we still value the lives of straight white rich people, specifically men, more than those of others. You can see that when you look at how we dealt with the Covid pandemic, both in that we managed to find a vaccine in eight months and that we focused on getting our own vaccine first, and even the second dose before the rest of the world got access to them.

I sometimes wonder what will happen with climate change, when mosquitos bring tropical diseases, or what if we have an Ebola outbreak? Will we then finally create vaccines and cures?

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laurenmaria422's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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transtwill's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

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yourfavavery's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

So I came to this from Lindsey Ellis's video about the problems with Rent the musical, and now I hate the musical even more after have read it.

This book is both sad, inspiring, infuriating, and hopeful. It outlines the beginning of the AIDS epidemic through to the pharmaceutical discoveries that made survival possible and the activism that led to those discoveries. It's devastating to understand the homophobia and bureaucratic nonsense these activists fought through to get drug treatments to market and how many died along the way, but it's hopeful because it also outlines the immense amount of work they did to break through red tape and get their humanity recognized. It was truly a feat of human determination and desperation, and should be required reading for anyone that's interested in community organizing or political movements.

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