'And The Band Played On' - Reagan's Real Legacy

When the AIDS epidemic was starting in the 80s, I was too young and too sheltered from the outside world to really get the impact of what was going on.  It wasn't until much later that I was able to get a true understanding of how somber of a time it was to live in.  To have your friends, your partner, waste away and painfully die of a disease, while treated like a leper.  Often times alone.  It's disturbing to think that tens of thousands of Americans died that way, just because it was initially thought of as a "gay disease".

I highly encourage you to watch a movie called 'And the Band Played On'.  It was made in the mid 90s and it is a dramatization of the years following the initial AIDS outbreak.  It's shocking to see how the Reagan Administration dragged their feet regarding the AIDS virus.  When it came to their cooperation with the CDC, the Administration lacked funding, resources and compassion.  By the time Reagan even mentioned the word "AIDS" in public, roughly 30,000 people had already died of the virus.  It was inexcusable.  The following is the last five minutes of the film, a tribute to those that died or contacted HIV in the 80s:



I really hope that fucker is rotting in Hell.