(no subject)

[fencer_x]

So, if you don't know it, I'm a Biomedical Sciences major. I was going into Vet school as recently as last May, and now I'm looking at graduate school in field biology, but that's not really the point of this post. The point is I'm taking Molecular Genetics--honors--and as such, I attend an extra session once a week to get an extra lecture on some topic relating to modern genetics. This semester's topic is HIV. Meh, whatevs, it wasn't that big a deal to me.

So to kick things off, the prof invited everyone over to his house to watch a movie, And the Band Played On, which has, like, every actor and his brother in it. It's not a documentary, it's a real movie, dramatizing the events of the early 1980s. It follows Dr. Don Francis from the CDC and the happenings in the US at the start of the AIDS epidemic, from its inception--the first cases among the gay male populations fo New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco--to the red tape that kept it from being acknowledged for years, to even the glad-handing and back-stabbing world of scientific research as laboratories in the US and France fought for the patent to the AIDS virus.

This...was one of the most moving movies I've ever seen. I cried twice, and I never cry during movies. The performances were superb, and I've been in this environment, I've seen laboratories competing, sharing information and back-stabbing one another to get that proposal through, to get that grant money, and somewhere along the way you forget that people are dying every time you snipe at someone else until it happens right in your own backyard and your best friend or husband or wife contracts this disease you're supposed to be fighting. Oh man...

I just...people. Go out. And rent. This movie. Especially if you're going into medical research. Amy--get this movie. Zach--get this movie. Watch it. And thank me later.

God, I'm going to bed. I'm gonna be thinking about this one for a while.

Comments

[zach99998.livejournal.com]

ill have to check it out

[zach99998.livejournal.com]

the local library has it

[hirenkoi.livejournal.com]

I saw this movie 3 ou 4 times cause Brazilian Warner show it a lot. It´s a great an very interesting movie. It´s scary when we think that in te begging, almost nothing was done about it because they thought Aids were only a "Gay Cancer".
But I think this movie produced a lot of impact to you, because you work with Biomedical.
Anyway, It´s a nice movie. ^^ ppl should watch it.

[intempestanox.livejournal.com]

I watched this movie my freshmen year, when I was still a chem major, focusing on pharmaceutical research. I agree, it's an awesome movie and very well done.

[fencer-x.livejournal.com]

almost nothing was done about it because they thought Aids were only a "Gay Cancer"

Yes, that part touched me a lot. Also, though at times it came across as funny, it was so very sad how ignorant people were of homosexuality then (among the older population, at least). And people didn't want to believe that it could have infected the blood supply because *DUH* gay people don't give blood! [/sarcasm]

[fencer-x.livejournal.com]

This movie made HIV quite interesting to me--I'd never considered it in the light of there being so much controversy surrounding it--heck, most of the movie took place before I was born! But seeing it in this light really clicked with me for some reason.

[anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com]

I'll have to watch it...wonder if Evans has it.

[frolicking4eva.livejournal.com]

it's on the to-do list.

[intempestanox.livejournal.com]

It's seeing it so raw, without the "Hollywood-ing" of it. Yes, it's been dramatized, but given the time period of the film and the newness of the disease at the time, not a lot of it is Hollywood. Sadly, too much of it is fact. I may not be a chem major anymore, but I'm still keeping up with the topic. In fact, given my new major, I'm thinking of taking the class Anthropology of AIDS, just to see the subject from a new perspective. I'm half afraid to, though, given the fact that it's going to be the in-depth, human study of it, if that makes sense. It's bound to get really raw at times.

And that's enough of a dissertation from me. Pardon the babbling, I just finished a test in one of my classes, and have to study for another one tomorrow. Woo hoo... x.x