AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge

This unfocused collection of essays, personal testimonials, interview transcripts and other material addresses a variety of topics: the public outcry that foiled the author's efforts to start a hospice for infants with AIDS on her rural Virginia estate; the varying degrees of success to which the world's gay communities have formed vital support systems to care for their sick and dying; the resistance among health and government officials that the author has repeatedly enountered when trying to point out the severity of the epidemic; the incidence of AIDS in prisons. The tales of AIDS patients and the health-care workers who have cared for them are as heartbreaking as the examples of bigotry (both official and civilian) are appalling. But Kubler-Ross (On Death and Dying, etc.) is writing (or compiling) from a distinct point of view that will severely limit the book's appeal. That is, that the AIDS epidemic has been visited upon the human race as a pre-Second Coming test of mankind's spiritual mettlethe ""ultimate challenge'' of the title. It is her belief, she tells a dying young man, that most AIDS victims ``chose to have this illness in order to help mankind to raise their consciousness, and to become more aware that we are all brothers and sisters.'' While her emphatic plea for compassion for all AIDS victims is beyond reproach, few of the ever-growing ranks of individuals touched by this tragedy will be comfortable with the idea that they or their loved ones have chosen to be afflicted by this hideous disease; nor will they find much comfort or counsel in this strange and disappointing book. (January 28)