One Boy at War: My Life in the AIDS UndergroundWith its opening idyllic images of children at play on the edge of a duck pond, One Boy at War introduces us to Paul Sergios - an all-American boy with an all-American life: an uneventful but happy childhood, a double date on prom night, graduation from USC in Los Angeles, a burgeoning career in film production. He was the quintessential Hollywood whiz kid - an attractive, bright, successful young executive on the rise, comfortably homosexual, basking in the glow of self-esteem. But in one horrifying moment of revelation, all that changed forever: Paul Sergios discovered he was HIV-positive. Filled with sorrow, terror, and rage, and faced with the prospect of allowing fate to lead him where it might, he chose instead to take control of his destiny - by any means, at any cost. Thus began the new life of Paul Sergios, a very brave and tenacious young man. He was also an impatient one. Looking to the American government and the mainstream medical establishment for help, he encountered near-total apathy. Drawing on knowledge gained from his second major at college - psychobiology - and poring through volume after volume of the available medical literature, he found nothing but an informational black hole. And he watched with ever-increasing frustration as the foremost scientists throughout America and Europe seemed to be engaged less in a common effort to find a cure than in a divisive mega-battle of political and medical egos. So it was that Sergios, in the face of death, became more fearlessly life-embracing, a paradox that propelled him headlong into the AIDS underground in a furious and obsessive quest for solutions to his predicament. It started quietly: a few phone calls, a handful ofcarefully composed letters. Making use of every piece of ammunition available to him - library research; one-on-one meetings; obscure and alternative medical journals; clandestine laboratories; experimental, frequently risky drugs smuggled across international borders; "clinics" housed in innocuous motels and shopping centers across the country - Sergios began waging his "war", linking hands, heart, and mind with a wildly diverse network of men and women who frequently had little in common but their determination to help one another and a desperate will to survive. In its final, devastating images of the "Walden Pond" of Sergios's youth - seen now from an entirely different perspective - One Boy at War ultimately comes full circle and goes beyond the immediate issue of AIDS; it evolves, instead, into a powerful metaphor of shattered dreams and innocence lost. Sure to provoke controversy, One Boy at War is gripping, heartbreaking, and brave - the story of a man whose questions about his fate have been outnumbered only by his refusals to take "no" for an answer. |
Contents
Life Insurance | 14 |
3 | 29 |
The Serendipitous Story of Compound | 62 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
active activists AIDS drug AIDS patients AIDS research Ampligen Angeles anti-HIV antibodies antigen antiviral approval beta-2 microglobulin blood cells Broder Burroughs Wellcome buyers cancer cause CD4 cell counts CD4 lymphocytes clinical trials clubs Compound Q David Delaney developed dextran dextran sulfate doctors dose drug's early efficacy Fauci Gavin Gerhardt HIV dementia HIV infection HIV-positive Hospital HTLV-III human immune system immunological Imuthiol isoprinosine Journal Kaposi's sarcoma knew Levin Luiz lymph nodes lymphocytes macrophages Martin Delaney Mayer Medicine Miami Michael milligrams monitoring months obtained opportunistic infections ozone p-24 antigen pentamidine Peptide percent personal communication Phase physicians placebo potential produced proteins protocol reported response retrovirus ribavirin Robert Gallo San Francisco seemed side effects Springer STUART subjects suramin symptoms syphilis therapy tion tissue told toxicity treated treatment trichosanthin vaccine viral Viroxan virus vitro York