A Medical Detective Story

Death, disease and the power of research. That is the lens through which Larry Krotz tells the story in Piecing the Puzzle: The Genesis of AIDS Research in Africa about the journey of Canadian researchers to uncover the link between sexually transmitted infections and the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, commonly known as HIV/AIDS. From Manitoba to Kenya and back, one discovery leads to another, resulting in a compelling story told through the eyes of Krotz, who worked with the main characters in the book over the span of 17 years. As he states, “I paid numerous visits to Nairobi, Mombassa, and Kisumu and felt both overawed and privileged to have such ready access to both an extraordinary venture of medical science and one of the defining catastrophes of history.”

Piecing the Puzzle begins with Ronald Arnold, head of the department of medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba...