Who are heroes and who victims?

Beyond Love by Dominique Lapicrrc (Century, £15) Martin Pendergast
I HAVE now been involved in supporting people with HIV and AIDS for eight years. During this time a wide variety of literature has passed my way. I have laced the views of biblical fundamentalists and been confronted by radical lesbian and gay political activists.
Some of the material has been excellent: some has been objectionable. None has roused such Linger in me as this latest work of "faction" by Dominique 1.apierre. Beyond Love is one of the most offensive hooks I have read.
It will do nothing to challenge the prejudice, discrimination and oppression experienced by so many women, children, and men living with HIV and AIDS. Lapierre is an arch-exponent of "faction", linking fact and fiction. Ile is also no stranger to controversy. The filming on location in Calcutta of a previous book, City of Joy, caused near riots in that city. My heart sank when the flyleaf of Beyond Love informed readers that it too is destined to become a "major international motion picture".
My hope is that Lapierre and others involved will learn from the "City of Joy" debacle and leave well alone.
Beyond Lore traces the emergence of AIDS in the USA and France in the early 1980s and the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in 1984. The highly competitive race between Robert Gallo (USA) and Luc Montagnier (France) to be credited with the discovery of 111V is a story worth telling.
The seamier aspects of the development of an internation AIDS industry, including the role of the big pharmaceutical companies, needed to be brought out into the open. The idols needed to be brought down rather than find themselves cast as heroes.
The confused motivations of some church responses to HIV and AIDS needed to be
analysed. lapierre misses the opportunity and turns the HIV
pandemic into an AIDS melodrama. Well researched, but sometimes sinking into irrelevant and unnecessary details, Beyond Love paradoxically creates heroes of those least worthy of the crown.
Into his story of scientific feuding and bitter professional rivalry Lapierre weaves tales of saintly nuns, agonised monks, committed • archbishops and heroic sufferers. So why do I find Beyond Love so offensive? For me the heroes of the HIV pandemic are those millions of people living with the virus and its associated illnesses known as AIDS. The scientists who figure in this book are a highly partial selection. The absence of certain individuals is often more significant than the inclusion of others.
Cardinal John O'Connor's involvement and the New York archdiocesan response to the HIV epidemic in the city are lionised beyond reality. It is well known that St Clare's Hospital, owned by the archdiocese, was due for closure. Cardinal O'Connor saw AIDS care as a way of attracting city funding to ensure the hospital's maintenance, courtesy of the influence of his friend, Major Ed Koch.
While giving prominence to St Clare's, Lapierre ignores completely the work of the more independent St Vincent's Hospital and particularly people like Sr Patrice Murphy, or the former Episcopal Bishop of New York, Paul Moore.
Although Lapierre recognises criticism of O'Connor's initiatives by some activists, there is no acknowledgement of the lack of support and often animosity from the archdiocese towards grass-roots responses.
Many HIV workers have serious reservations about the residences for people with HIV provided by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. I know of people with HIV who have preferred to return to penal institutions in New York and Washington DC rather than remain in places like Gift of LOVE' or Gift of Hope.
Lapierre glorifies these centres as ideals of care, studiously avoiding other places of hospitality, acceptance and refreshment. He has little appreciation of the impact of heterosexual transmission, the dominant feature of HIV in the third world and becoming more prominent in the west.
A few years ago Randy Shifts, the American journalist, published a somewhat idiosyncratic view of the emergence of AIDS and HIV in And The Band Played On. Beyond Love reads like a rewrite of that more honestly controversial book under the pen of Dame Barbara Cart land, with most of the ideas originating in The Nun's Story or The Sound Of Music.
Martin Pendergast is HIV coordinator for Waltham Forest Health Authority and convenor of Catholic AIDS Link.