The HIV/AIDS epidemic offers lessons for today鈥檚 COVID-19 pandemic. The 黑料吃瓜资源 (CSHL) Center for Humanities & History of Modern Biology captured some of those lessons in a 2016 CSHL conference, 鈥�.鈥� In 2021, they developed a new kind of that allows readers to easily look up and analyze keywords used in . The project, titled 鈥淥ral Histories of Biology, Medicine, and Pandemic Response,鈥� was led by the executive director of the CSHL Library & Archives Ludmila Pollock and supported by a .
The four-day conference brought together HIV/AIDS scientists from all over the world, many of whom shared emotional stories about their seminal discoveries through 49 talks and panels. Pollock says:
鈥淭hey came together to share the stories, how it happened. It’s like a mirror to what鈥檚 happened today. We wanted to show this amazing contribution to science and medicine these people made. Everyone can hear talks from researchers, as well as from clinicians, who treated the first AIDS patient, and they can see slides. It鈥檚 just unbelievable. So touching. And it sounds very similar to the news of 2020.鈥�
鈥淭he problem with any video recording is that it’s pretty hard to get at what’s inside the video recording. My work was to go through and create an index and glossary of anything substantive that was ever said. It was really remarkable in how much stuff about the history of the research was condensed into the space of four days.鈥�
Other CSHL members who worked on this project included Archivist Clare Clark, Historian of Life Sciences Alistair Sponsel, Research Informationist Matt Dunn, and Systems and Operations Manager Tom Adams.
Pollock hopes readers will be inspired by all the people and investments it took to tackle HIV/AIDS. She notes, 鈥淲e can relate to the amazing stories scientists shared about their work in a previous pandemic. It is so relevant today.鈥�
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Funding
National Endowment for the Humanities