Bitter Pill: Randy Shilts and the Dawn of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

A deadly mystery and one reporter’s fight to expose the truth during the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic.With hospital beds filling up, the clock was ticking. . . . What would it take to wake up the nation? A masterful and eye-opening historical graphic novel. San Francisco, 1981. Randy Shilts-biographer of Harvey Milk and the first openly gay journalist hired by a major U.S. newspaper-receives a chilling call at the San Francisco Chronicle: a Los Angeles patient is being treated for a rare and aggressive cancer. As Shilts digs deeper, a disturbing pattern emerges.The illness seems to strike only gay men, with early cases linked to a Castro-district bathhouse.A meeting with an infectious disease researcher confirms his worst fear: this so-called “gay cancer” is neither rare nor isolated-it’s the beginning of a national health crisis.Barred from reporting on it directly, Shilts resorts to sensationalist tactics to force attention on the unfolding HIV/AIDS epidemic. His relentless pur