Witness to AIDS

I'm not sure 'enjoying' is the right word to use about a book about living with AIDS, but the Edwin Cameron book is good and informative and I'm working my way through it and learning lots. Particularly like the passage below, think it sums up what people go through.

‘AIDS is a disease. It is an infection, a syndrome, an illness, a disorder, a condition threatening to human life. It is an epidemic – a social crisis, an economic catastrophe, a political challenge, a human disaster. AIDS is known. It has been analysed assessed assayed tested measured surveyed considered reflected documented depicted exhaustively described. Its virus is primal particular sub-cellular mutant enveloped nitrogenous. Our knowledge of it is clear and precise. But the disease is also unknown. It is guessed estimated projected approximated sketched debated disputed controverted hidden obscured. Still, it is mere fact, an event, a circumstance, a happening, a reality as present as the ocean or the moon.

AIDS is mouth and tongue and scar and nerve and eye and brain and skin and tum and gut. AIDS is smell and feel – of sweat and grime and snot and breath and bowel and secretion, discharge, pus, putrescence, disintegration, excrement, waste. Human waste. AIDS is feeling – painful sharp tingling burning heavy dull weakening wasting enervating diminishing destroying bereaving. AIDS is fear. It is breathless and nameless.

AIDS is stigma disgrace discrimination hatred hardship abandonment isolation exclusion prohibition persecution poverty privation.

AIDS is metaphor. It is a threat a tragedy a blight a blot a scar a stain a plague a scourge a pestilence a demon killer rampant rampaging murderer. It is made moral. It is condemnation deterrence retribution punishment, a sin a lesson a curse rebuke judgement. It is a disease.’