Two Futures--Millions of Lives
2030 will be a year of reckoning for the AIDS epidemic, marking fifty years of one of the worst epidemics in the history of the world. The 28th International AIDS Conference will be held in July of that year in Durban, South Africa. The conference will include a panel of leaders looking back on the fifty-year history of HIV and AIDS. But what will the panelists say?
If HIV and AIDS have made a strong resurgence in the 2020s, the panel will be called How We Lost the War Against AIDS, and the panelists will focus on the mistakes that led to an overwhelming human catastrophe.
But in a different future, a future in which HIV and AIDS are no longer threats to public health, the panel will be called How We Won the War Against AIDS, and the panelists will celebrate the wise decisions that led to a humanitarian triumph.
Which future will we see? Now is the time to choose.
David Barstow deftly combines the meticulous attention to order and detail that you would expect from a scientist with the persistence and passion for action you would expect from an activist.
--From the foreword by Dr. Jonathan Quick, MD, MPH, author of The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It
David Barstow's book lays out two possible storylines based on the two possible choices the world might make: a scenario of terrible human suffering or a victorious ending where humanity "wins" and the threat is averted. We can write this next chapter, but what will we write? The choice is ours to make.
--Richard Stearns, President Emeritus, World Vision US
Barstow paints a picture of what the future will look like if we do not urgently recognize that we are far from ending AIDS. He shows that Two Futures are possible. The HIV response has been one of the most successful in the history of public health. If we act now, we can get to the end. If we do not, history will not treat current policy makers well.
--Mark Dybul, Professor and Co-Director, Center for Global Health and Quality, Georgetown University Medical Center
