Book Review - We Are All The Same: A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love
Reviewed by Prof Eleanor Preston-Whyte
The Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking (HIVAN)
 "We Are All The Same" is not the normal scientific fare of the readership of The Lancet. In the jargon of the book trade, it is, however, a good read, and far more than, as its subtitle promises, "A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love". It is the human story of millions of people in the developing world who learn of and experience HIV/AIDS in their personal lives and deaths. It is the story of the political struggle for freedom, human rights, and equity of access to health care in South Africa beyond the establishment of the outward form of a new democracy. Above all, by telling the story of Nkosi Johnson and his adoptive white mother, Gail, it raises (but does not seriously try to answer) the question of why, at this late stage in the new South African democracy, the struggle for access to effective treatment for HIV/AIDS was necessary at all.
The bare bones of the story are well known in South Africa. Nkosi was one of the children infected at birth for whom antiretrovirals came too late. His engaging personality is captured, as are the contributions to his happiness from other players in the dramas through which he and Gail move: the HIV-positive people in the shelters who love him, the voluntary workers who raise funds to run these shelters, his two families, and his special school friend.
 Jim Wooten is one of many journalists who ensured that Nkosi's story reverberated around the world. Nkosi has taken on, as Nelson Mandela has suggested, the mantle of an HIV/AIDS icon. He has become a symbol of the ethical responsibility for treatment to reach poor countries as speedily and effectively as possible. Why and how one person is raised above hundreds (even millions) of others to epitomise a particular social category or movement, is a sociological question that may be raised in the mind of the more thoughtful reader. In Nkosi's case, among many reasons might have been his appearance as a speaker with President Mbeki at the opening of the 13th International AIDS Conference in 2000. The fact that it was the first time this meeting had been held in Africa, and the President's obdurate stand on HIV/AIDS, drew the media like flies to honey. Wooten tells this story graphically and builds the opening words of Nkosi's speech into a recurring refrain that gives the book both its title and a tragic coherence.
"We Are All The Same" is a potent advocacy tool for access to antiretrovirals.
On a personal level, it is a celebration of courage and humanity. For this, this short book might constitute rewarding and important reading for all in the medical profession.
Professor Preston-Whyte wrote the above review of "We Are All The Same" for The Lancet (04 December 2004, Volume 364, Number 9450). "We Are All The Same: A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love" is published by Penguin Press (2004).
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