NCJ Number
130856
Date Published
1989
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Most of the books written on AIDS in the United States cluster at one end of the spectrum of possible approaches to the disease, that is, guides on how to avoid AIDS and how to have safer sex.
Abstract
Clustered at the other end of the spectrum are books that treat AIDS as a subject of history. They seek to place legal, political, media, and medical dimensions of AIDS alongside other cultural phenomena. The author contends that politicians have not been actively involved in the issues of sexually transmitted diseases and that injecting drug use is a social issue that has generated little political interest. Nonetheless, injecting drug use and sexually transmitted diseases represent the primary routes by which HIV is transmitted. Rather than emphasizing risk reduction, as gay safer sex advocates have done, many authors stress risk elimination through HIV antibody testing. The emphasis on an all-or-nothing approach to sexual relations in the era of AIDS ignores the facts of sexual and marital relationships in the United States and other western societies. Few people mate for life, and HIV testing far from constitutes the perfect marker of infection. It is suggested that readers exercise caution when examining AIDS texts and interpret them within the framework of their experiences with health, gender and social identities, and politics. 12 references and 19 notes