Cure for AIDS Found? Interview with Through These Veins Author: Anne Marie Ruff

Anne Marie Ruff has a plausible scenario. Her first book, Through These Veins, explores the relationship between biodiversity and the race to find a cure for AIDs. This exciting story crosses several continents, from a village in Ethiopia to Washington DC. Besides being a medical thriller, Through These Veins explores the cross-cultural interaction between two strong heroines and a dedicated scientist bent for answers.

Anne Marie, can you tell us a bit about your background and why you decided to write Through These Veins?

I didn’t set out to write fiction, which seems so contrary to the ‘just the facts ma’am’ axiom we associate with journalism.  I was living in Bangkok, working as a freelance journalist, with the intention of shining a light on unreported or underreported environmental stories. I also covered medical and AIDS research stories to help pay the rent, but they were not really my passion. After a year of telling gloom and doom stories about the destruction of forests, or coral reefs, or traditional agricultural varieties, I felt like even I was becoming desensitized to my deeply held belief that our collective health is inextricably linked to the health of our environment.

When, in the course of my reporting, I met a charismatic Italian scientist who approached plant collecting and conservation as if it were an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. I had a shazaam moment. He ignited an idea for a new approach, a fictional story centered on a character like him. He could carry readers around the world, and inspire in others the passion he felt for the richness of life on the planet. He could articulate the imperative to conserve it for the health and well being of this and future generations.

I am grateful for the assignment to cover a scientific conference in Malaysia where I had the chance meeting with the Italian scientist, Stefano Padulosi, for it allowed me to marry my different reporting interests and use everything I learned and more in a novel way.  So facts support my fiction, and hopefully, my fiction will serve the facts.

So basically, you already had a strong background in all of the scientific and technical aspects of the story. I would absolutely LOVE it if your story were true, that someone out there has a cure for HIV/AIDS. Do you think it's possible that such a breakthrough could be squashed by the government?

I think the possibility of a cure for HIV/AIDS would be of interest to the government, but could pose disincentives to pharmaceutical companies.  I would challenge you to show me one pharmaceutical company that can afford to undertake the very expensive, risky, and long-term research necessary to develop a cure for HIV/AIDS, or almost any other disease.  Drug companies produce drugs that people take over and over, therapies.  For example, Truvada, a drug used to prevent HIV/AIDS, has just been approved by the FDA, but it needs to be taken daily. Whereas a cure is sold only once, or over a finite period of time, so the sales model simply will not support the effort.  I don't think that makes drug companies villians, drug makers are simply responding to market forces and are legally required to their shareholders to pursue the most lucrative business strategy.  I think the problem highlights the need for different organizational models, more along the lines of what the Gates Foundation is doing, to support research into a cure for HIV/AIDS, or any other disease for that matter. 

You've traveled all around the world. What inspires you to write about people who may view the world so differently from you?

For me, people are inseparable from travel, and some of the best experiences of my life have been through travel. I love to be in motion, by train, plane, automobile, bicycle, rickshaw, you name it - and all along the way I meet people who teach me things just by living their lives in ways different from my own.  This is the great university of life.  My passport stamps tend to the obscure places in the world. When I spent a lot of time traveling in my 30’s, I figured I could hit more common tourist destinations later in my life. Some of my favorite places – perhaps all the more so because they were unexpectedly wonderful – appear in Through These Veins.

Turkmenistan was full of intense flavors, the contrasts of green orchards and barren deserts, people first guarded, then gracious. That trip gave me such a sense of adventure because I felt the place remote, cut off, unhurried, absolutely non-digital. Ethiopia offered a highly refined cultural history in the capital, set against a rich kaleidoscope of geography in the countryside – mountains, rivers, forests, waterfalls, and birds – oh the birds! In the 1980s Americans were conditioned to think of Ethiopia only as a place of deserts and famines. To be sure, hunger and poverty do exist in Ethiopia, but so do a million other stories. Oman is another favorite place of mine. The exposed geology of the mountains and the gracious hospitality of Arabs, especially my friend’s Bedouin family that hosted me made for an unforgettable village experience – also off the beaten path (are you sensing a pattern here?). Driving across the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia, a train ride down the western coast of India, a day trip from Beirut to Damascus to shop in the centuries old bazaar. 

All of these travels were populated by fascinating people.  I have always been a storyteller, and we tell what we know.  So during the years I was traveling, telling a story from a perspective broader than mine as an American seemed less of a conscious choice and more about simply drawing on what was around me.

Your photo albums must be visually rich as well. What was Ethiopia like? How hard was it for you to blend in and get a feel for the culture?

Volumes have been written by many writers more qualified than I about Ethiopia’s history, politics, and culture. My objective in traveling around Ethiopia was not to become an expert on any of these things, but to experience the country, to smell it, to hear it, to taste and touch it. And in the process I had a rip-roaring good time. Of course I didn't blend in, but my obvious foreignness made me a curiosity, allowed me to meet all kinds of people; rich people, poor people, scientists and shepherds, hucksters and holy men, expats and exiles. Almost every single person I met displayed an incredible hospitality, sharing with me whatever they had – food, song, dance, stories, intoxicants. On a bus from Gondar to Bahar Dar, I even made friends with a baby who giggled and offered me his mother’s breast after he had had his fill of mother’s milk (we all found this hilarious). I have enjoyed the bawdy humor of Asmari music and taej in small towns. I have marveled at the religious finery and felt the exhilaration in the streets of Addis during Meskal. I have followed the route of coffee from forests, to factories, to cupping conventions. I have struggled with the bad internet connections and inefficient bureaucracy. I have been awed by the architecture and art at places of pilgrimage.  You can hear a little of what I heard through a radio musical tour of Ethiopia here.

In short, I have experienced some of the splendor and richness Ethiopia has to offer. I am grateful for these opportunities. I hope that others will be able to experience Ethiopia vicariously as they read Through These Veins, and I hope I will be able to repay some of the debt I owe to Ethiopia and the many people I met there.

Like you, I live in a neighborhood where cross-cultural relationships are the norm. My children are Chinese and Puerto-Rican and yours are Punjabi-European. Are you planning on writing any stories exploring the dynamics of family relationships and deeply held traditions?

This is another beloved topic for me.  I am fascinated by the mixing of cultures, especially in situations as intimate and profound as marriage.  This year I published an article about the cross cultural population in Downtown Los Angeles, an amusing look at what happens when you mix all kinds of people together.  On a more serious level, I am writing my second novel about an American woman who marries a Pakistani man, a man who subsequently commits a terrorist act.  The story delves into some searing questions about identity and loyalty, justice and revenge.  While the book is by no means autobiographical, I am drawing on my own experience of a cross-cultural marriage (I married a Sikh man from India) and a familiarity with Islamic culture which I developed during three years I spent living in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates which hosts a large Pakistani population.  Writing the book has been an intensely emotional experience for me, kind of playing out a very scary 'what if?'.  

Sounds like a lot of intense drama! I cannot wait to read about it. Sounds like we have some time for random questions.

Chicken or egg?

Chicken! (at least until she lays - we have four in the back yard - and they definitely arrived before the eggs, here's a little more on that http://www.annemarieruff.com/blog.html )

Green thumb or brown?

Green

Morning lark or night owl?

Hoo hoo!

White meat or dark? [I'm talking turkey here.]

Dark

push-ups or sit-ups?

Sit-ups, Pilates style

Thanks for being a good sport. We enjoyed talking to you.

My pleasure - thanks for such a great set of questions.

One lucky commentator will win a paperback copy of Anne Marie's lovely book Through These Veins. (US/CAN only) Please leave a comment or question for Anne Marie and also your e-mail or how to contact you. Let's pray that a cure will be found!

Anne Marie can be found at her website: http://www.annemarieruff.com and Through These Veins is 99c for the ebook at Amazon.com