AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease - Softcover

Fee, Elizabeth; Fox, Daniel M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520077784 ISBN 13: 9780520077782

Publisher: University of California Press, 1991

Synopsis

When AIDS was first recognized in 1981, most experts believed that it was a plague, a virulent unexpected disease. They thought AIDS, as a plague, would resemble the great epidemics of the past: it would be devastating but would soon subside, perhaps never to return. By the middle 1980s, however, it became increasingly clear that AIDS was a chronic infection, not a classic plague.

In this follow-up to AIDS: The Burdens of History, editors Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox present essays that describe how AIDS has come to be regarded as a chronic disease. Representing diverse fields and professions, the twenty-three contributors to this work use historical methods to analyze politics and public policy, human rights issues, and the changing populations with HIV infection. They examine the federal government's testing of drugs for cancer and HIV, and show how the policy makers' choice of a specific historical model (chronic disease versus plague) affected their decisions. A powerful photo essay reveals the strengths of women from various backgrounds and lifestyles who are coping with HIV. A sensitive account of the complex relationships of the gay community to AIDS is included. Finally, several contributors provide a sampling of international perspectives on the impact of AIDS in other nations.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Now, a decade after AIDS was first recognized, there is increasing evidence that analogies to the past can be misleading, as they usually are in the history of war or economics or anything else. In this essay we summarize and criticize the brief historiography of the epidemic and suggest research questions and methods that may lead to more valid and useful historical writing. We then introduce the essays in this volume, essays that lead us in the directions we have proposed as both necessary and useful. - from the Introduction.

About the Author

Elizabeth Fee is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Daniel M. Fox is President of the Milbank Memorial Fund and Professor of Social Sciences in Medicine at the State University of New York, Stonybrook.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0520077784
• ISBN 13: 9780520077782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 440