businesses to operate whose sole source of being is the very activity that communicates the disease. >> dianne feinstein wanted me to close the bath houses and basically said if you can save one life, it is worth closing them. >> there are still a number of people who refuse to believe that the problem exists. what we are talking about is playing russian roulette. >> i got a call from cleve, he said to me, merv, if you close the bathhouses i'm going to man the barricades. >> i didn't want them shut down by the government, what's next, close the bars? i don't think it was unrealistic to be frightened of government action against us through the period it was recently decriminalized. >> it is the most frightening medical mystery of our times. aids has spread worldwide. it began in africa and spread to haiti and from haiti to the united states. >> scientists strongly suspect it is a virus. all of the evidence indicates it