No Mercy / No Malice

AIDS and Ghosts

In the ‘80s, the disease haunted all of us — always around, waiting, striking

Editor’s Note: No Mercy/No Malice is a column from Professor Scott Galloway, where he shares various reflections on business, tech, and life on his mind each week.

I’ve been thinking about AIDS a lot lately. How’s that for an opening sentence?

I hope we’ll never see an epidemic this devastating again. One million people died from AIDS-related causes in 2017, and 36 million have succumbed to the disease since the beginning of the epidemic. In sum, the HIV virus has killed the population of Canada. AIDS-related deaths have been cut in half since their peak in 2004.

Just as we’ve outsourced war to young people who feel indebted to our country — unlike an increasingly large cohort who believe the country owes them — we outsourced and compartmentalized much of the suffering and the fight against AIDS. It was a “gay disease,” and we thought of a group who were victims as irresponsible instead. I believe our initial response to the crisis, as a nation, will go down as a stain on the American story.