Karishma Attari

By Elton John

Rs 695

As high profile books go, Love is the Cure tops the charts. Then again, that’s something that singer-songwriter-artist Elton John is used to doing. His ability to touch an emotional chord, and hold the public with it, has been demonstrated enough over his long musical career.

The song he composed on the death of his friend Princess Diana, titled Candle in the Wind, remains the biggest bestselling single in billboard history. Yet what many of his fans don’t know is that his friendship with Princess Diana, as with many luminaries, among them Elizabeth Taylor, and Bill Clinton, translated into a concerted effort to tackle the AIDS crisis head-on — and with astonishing results. The proceeds of Love is the Cure benefit the Elton John Aids Foundation, but also benefit the cause of fighting AIDS by dispensing staggering facts and figures about the disease that are — let’s face it — that much more interesting because they are part of a ex-cocaine addict and rock star’s journey into salvation.
Love is the Cure documents the rise, spread of, and measures taken to tackle AIDS in the western world. It opens with the case of Ryan White, a young boy from Indiana, who found himself in the eye of a hate storm when his HIV status became public. Ryan White’s struggle to have a “normal life” is a study of the history of AIDS and the ignorance surrounding it. Having contracted the HIV infection from one of the many blood transfusions that a haemophilic requires, Ryan White found himself ostracised from school, hospitals, and even had to move towns. Elton John, meanwhile, was being his own worst enemy, abusing food, drugs, and sex, and he had touched rock bottom before he found himself drawn in by Ryan White’s very public anguish, ironically from a magazine article he read in a doctor’s waiting room. This became an anchor, a clarion call to make better use of his own life, and brought Elton to rehabilitation and to the cause of fighting AIDS.
This is a sentimental book, as the title suggests, and the continual repetition of Elton’s core beliefs can result in some amount of tooth-grinding: “We need to stop the ignorance and the hatred. … It’s very idealistic, saying love is the cure, but it really is,” says Elton. Elsewhere, he says “In other words, ending AIDS requires love, and lots of it. And the best way to engender love is to foster dialogue. We can only love one another if we understand each other.” Such statements, fortunately, are backed up by the kind of facts that suggest AIDS could have been nipped in the bud had the powers-that-be shown a little more interest in the fate of those affected by the disease. The Western world was slow to react for a range of reasons that seem to bolster Elton’s contention about a lack of caring being the prime mover around the AIDS explosion, the disease was considered by some to be God’s retributive anger punishing the homosexuals, or somehow a result of being black and poor.
There is enough factual evidence quoted in the book to suggest that even today, the factors that compound the problem have more to do with the lack of a correct response, than to the disease being “incurable”. In fact, being HIV positive isn’t necessarily the death sentence it was. Elton John is categorical about the things that come in the way of achieving the end of AIDS. There is greed: as with the case of pharmaceutical giant Bayer that sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for haemophiliacs, (the same medicine through which Ryan White contracted AID), allegedly aware that this carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS, to Asia and Latin America in the mid-80’s all the while selling a safer product in the West. Then there are regressive ideals: there is the role of “AIDS denialists” like the erstwhile South African President Thabo Mbedki, who insisted that poverty and malnutrition are the “cause” of AIDS, going on to reject free medicine, grants for treatment and prevention. There is the conservatism of the Cathollic Church: Pope Benedict XVI visited Africa where the disease is rampaging and talked about the need to combat AIDS but added that contraception is a sin, even though condoms are a most effective barrier to the spread of AIDS.
Pit this against the work of Elton John’s foundation, and you have to allow that while the arguments in Love is the Cure seem simplistic, they also seem to hit the mark. EJAF or the Elton John AIDS Foundation has raised and donated $275 million towards fighting the disease worldwide, partnering with programmes that often target those who might otherwise fall into the cracks. In Haiti, for example, where the rate of HIV infection is very high — 1.9 per cent, the EJAF’s grantees set up an organisation that provided health services and advocated the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The only way that AIDS can end is if every single person that has the disease is considered worthy of treatment and support. What the world needs to end AIDS is the spirit of relentless and unceasing partnership — where drug companies, governments, NGOS and even ordinary citizens work towards a common goal — can one quibble if Elton John prefers to call it “love”? Love is the Cure makes a compelling argument, even if its chorus-like repetitions seem like the lines from a pop love song.