With all the fear-mongering, panic, and politicizing accompanying the outbreak of the coronavirus, it feels like d�j� vu. In line with a comment uttered at the end of the documentary "5B," just released on DVD by Wolfe Video, if we don't remember lessons learned from the AIDS epidemic, they will happen again. "5B" is the story of the fabled ward at San Francisco General (now Zuckerberg) Hospital that opened in 1983 to treat patients with AIDS. In archival footage and first-person oral histories of those who served on the front lines, we relive the crisis not from the perspective of patients, but from that of nurses and other caregivers. What emerges is not a depressing chronicle of a deadly disease, but a much-needed celebration of the human spirit by participants whose bravery and dedication render them American heroes.
The film opens with the libertine reverie of the 1970s gay liberation movement, but quickly shifts gears with nightmare images of healthy men reduced to sickly skeletons (interval between diagnosis and terminal velocity was four months). No one knew what was causing this disease or how it was spread. Dread of the unknown relegated AIDS patients to isolated social pariahs, food trays left outside their rooms, their basic needs neglected by healthcare professionals refusing to tend them for fear of contracting the mystery illness. Gay nurse Cliff Morrison, whose friends were dying, more angry than scared about their treatment, spearheaded building the first-of-its-kind unit specializing in the care of PWAs. This required extraordinary courage. Morrison advised those volunteering, "Go home and talk with your significant other, because we can't tell you won't get this disease."
In the early years nurses and doctors were frightened but felt a professional and moral duty not to refuse support to the sick. Initially nurses wore precautionary garb, but found that impeded care, because patients craved human contact, especially touch. So they decided not even to use gloves, the first enactment of unorthodox rules allowing patients to define who was family, permitting pets, enabling lovers to crawl into bed with PWAs and hold them. Such actions proved the disease wasn't transmittable by air or touch. As nurse David Denmark observes, "You weren't here to cure people, but to care for them," and as these PWAs were often estranged from their biological families, staff became their family. Director of nurses Alison Moed remarks, "They were permitting us to share this intimate process of dying. Yes, people died, but we made a difference in how they died."
There was resistance among nurses in other units who protested to their union about wearing protective clothing. Later some of them would claim a "homosexual hierarchy" who practiced reverse discrimination against nurses wanting to take precautions. Chief of Orthopedic Surgeon Lorraine Day (the villain) led the media charge in the anxiety about occupational exposure ("Patients are concealing a loaded gun that I can't see") and demanded AIDS tests be given to all patients. While sympathetic with the real hazard of needle stick, it became quickly apparent this concern masqueraded homophobia and petulant jealousy. "What were those 5B nurses doing that was so fantastic and no different from other nurses?"
The documentary conveys how controversies about AIDS (epitomized by the quarantine rantings of CA Congressman William Dannemeyer, who later married Day) seeped into the "bubble" of the Ward, affecting nurses, compounding their already stressful lives, sometimes leading to poor coping mechanisms like addiction and ruination of personal relationships. Hank Plante, one of the first openly gay television news reporters, gives social context for the discrimination that complicated AIDS care. We hear from Rita Rocket, who for 18 years provided Sunday brunch and entertainment for all HIV patients, yet when pictured pregnant sitting next to a patient, was bombarded with hate mail.
Hospitals and treatment centers worldwide came to study and implement the revolutionary San Francisco model, permanently changing hospital protocols. The arrival of protease inhibitor treatments in 1996, rendering AIDS a chronic not fatal disease, led to the closing of the ward in 2003. Directed by Paul Haggis ("Crash") and Dan Krauss, this is a gripping film. There's something healing about watching people follow the better angels of their nature, by responding to strangers with compassion instead of neglect. Rita Rocket sums up beautifully the philosophy of the entire 5B family: "So much in love is not what people do or say, but how they make people feel." Watch "5B" at your own risk, for you can't help but want to become a kinder human being as a result.