MFDB

Storyline

Despite recent progress in containing the AIDS pandemic, HIV is still a killer of epic proportion. When did HIV originate and where? How did it become the worst pandemic of our time?

Understanding the origins of the virus could provide crucial clues to help in the battle against it. In The Bloody Truth, three scientists from Belgium, U.S./Canada, and Congo embark on a journey through Central Africa to trace the virus’ beginnings. The discovery of a mysterious medical archive containing thousands of tissue samples conserved from the colonial era provides them with evidence on how colonialism prepared the grounds for the AIDS pandemic.

The archive exists because of colonial doctors, who, unsure of a patient’s symptoms, took a piece of tissue and preserved it in paraffin wax along with the medical report to store for future analysis. Now, scientists have the means to analyze those archived tissue samples for HIV.

These samples, forgotten for over 50 years, hold vital information on how HIV became a pandemic—and on how the mechanisms of colonialism laid the ground for the pandemic.