Philip Alcabes (2010) Dread (HIV 11)

MY Sampson Onwuka


One of the books that recollect some of the stories in the early stories of HIV in the Bronx and New York, is the book by Philip Alcabes (2010) Dread. The book is useful in considering what the early CDC workers attempted to achieve with HIV and how some of the jokes about HIV did not shy from the social stigma of those who were called freaks or in the 60’s, bums, some of who suffered all kinds of malfunction in the body and were essentially housed somewhere else. The attempt to contain some of the challenges of the virus using vaccination and the structure of HIV become necessary. In his chronicle on HIV he pointed to early date made by CDC which was released in September 1982, that “Homosexuals or bi-sexual makes – 75%, intravenous drug abuser with no history of homosexual activity – 13%, Haitians with neither a history of homosexuality or intravenous drug abuse – 6%, persons with hemophilia A with no other risk factors – 0.3%, and persons in none of the other groups – 5%.”, a position that has remained the case for a while. The emphasis is New York and its fights on new pandemic, and the challenges of health department in raising awareness in communities such as the Bronx. If there ae things to be said about the Dread, is the book relays how New York and perhaps the schools of medicine and health research led several wars on pandemics, including Polio which served the backdrop to the Rockefeller School of Medicine and the fight on for cancer and use of oral vaccine. Whereas anyone could get the virus he argues, it was simply the most dreaded thing partly for the fact that there was no cures at the time, but largely for the social stigma that was associated with it. At the beginning, the number of report on HIV among the Black and Hispanic in New York was quite slim, overtime, the number got bigger and the culture higher and among the new migrants from Haiti. Although New York in times past may have entertained the arrival of diseases and other infectious disorder, it has lead the fights against dangerous diseases, against Polio and Influenza, against diseases; both airborne and waterborne which some travelers and immigrants brought to New York, in which several places such as Randall’s Island, New York, served as the repository for those dead or dying, remain the quarantine for cold virus. The modernity of New York now and perhaps then appear on the world map and its visible schools of medicine where not always the case, for at least we can set our eyes on the formidable FDR days, whose efforts as Governor of New York and eventually president proved a watermark for the attitude of the public to issues of health. It would not mean that the anointing of Harlem River drive heading the F.D.R was named after for political reasons, but combating Polio by forces affiliated with his office such Bob O’Connor makes the faithful date of CDC necessary tools towards the growth in health we have seen over the years.