Elton John to Write Book on the AIDS Epidemic

Award-winning musician and long-time HIV/AIDS activist Sir Elton John has announced that he will release a personal memoir this year. The book, Love is the Cure: Ending the Global AIDS Epidemic, will be on store shelves this July, just in time for the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., this summer.

Reuters reported:

In a statement released on Monday, publishers Hodder & Stoughton promised a "very personal story of ... Elton's life during the AIDS epidemic, including his agony at seeing friend after friend perish needlessly."

Among the individuals it describes are [Freddie] Mercury and Ryan White, an American boy who became a "poster child" for HIV/AIDS after he was banned by a school because of his condition.

According to reports at the time, John was with White when he died in a U.S. hospital in 1990 aged 18.

"This is a disease that must be cured not by a miraculous vaccine, but by changing hearts and minds, and through a collective effort to break down social barriers and to build bridges of compassion," John said.

"Why are we not doing more? This is a question I have thought deeply about, and wish to answer -- and to help change -- by writing this book."

John wasn't always the tenacious HIV/AIDS activist that he has been the past 20 years. Last year, he admitted on the CNN special "Hope Survives: Thirty Years of AIDS" that he did nothing when the epidemic first hit, despite losing 80 friends to the disease. He said, "I was frightened. I was scared. I turned my back. I should have been out there with Larry Kramer."

All of the proceeds from John's book will go to charity.

Kellee Terrell is the former news editor for TheBody.com and TheBodyPRO.com.

Follow Kellee on Twitter: @kelleent.

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