The film does make a strong point, quickly, that people feared HIV-infected others regardless of how they were infected; there is an illogical presumption of "guilt" in people's minds. This was common in the 1980s with people who got HIV at birth for from blood transfusions.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
"25 to Life": a boy infected with HIV by a blood transfusion grows to manhood without symptoms and secretly
The documentary “25 to Life” (2014), directed by Michael
Brown, tells the sobering story of William Brawner, now in his mid 30s, who
kept his HIV-positive status secret for much of his life.
But Brawner’s story is one of having to deal with one’s hand
in life – call it karma if you want. He
was scalded by an abusive man (father??) as a boy, and given skin grafts and
blood transfusions. This all happened in
the early 1980s, well before there was a blood test for HIV (or even before the
“HTLV-III” virus has been identified).
So his story is a little bit parallel to that of Ryan White.
His mother (and close family) decided to keep it a secret,
and so does he, for a very long time.
Will started taking AZT, which had side effects. But he grew up into manhood without
progressing into symptoms About 10
percent of people infected with HIV probably do not develop major symptoms
(although their blood work is abnormal) for decades, maybe never, if left
alone. They may have a gene that resists HIV transmission among T-helper cells.
The film does make a strong point, quickly, that people feared HIV-infected others regardless of how they were infected; there is an illogical presumption of "guilt" in people's minds. This was common in the 1980s with people who got HIV at birth for from blood transfusions.
The film does make a strong point, quickly, that people feared HIV-infected others regardless of how they were infected; there is an illogical presumption of "guilt" in people's minds. This was common in the 1980s with people who got HIV at birth for from blood transfusions.
Brawner grows up, and develops the usual heterosexual interest
in women, and wants to have a wife and family. (He seems to have recovered from the burns, which is no longer an appearance issue itself, and that is rather amazing.) He does, at some point, tell his girl friend (Bridgette), whom he
marries (if I follow right – this point is glossed over in the media), and they
ponder whether they need to use condoms and can have children. Finally she does get pregnant, toward the end
of the film. As far as I could tell, she
didn’t get infected. Many heterosexual partners do not get infected, and
the virus is even harder to transmit from women to men than from men to women
(an argument that the right wing tried to use against gay men in the
1980s). He learns to give her shots – is
this for diabetes (which sometimes first shows up in pregnancy)?
For years, though, he does not tell close friends, and
attends Howard University and is popular, with no one knowing. But it is common
in life not to know a lot of things about friends, right? Some news clips (even more than the film)
however, do talk about his behavior, which
sounds questionable.
The official Facebook is here The distributor is the African-American Film
Festival Releasing Movement, along with Black Lives Matter and
There are numerous articles about the film, such as on
indiewire here , PGN here and “The Root” here. and NPR here.
Picture: from Baltimore Sandtown neightborhood, my visit
yesterday, are Freddie Gray incident. That
will certainly generate a film.
.
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