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- Title
Introduction.
- Authors
Pollak, Michael
- Abstract
As a public health problem, AIDS is a new, unforeseen phenomenon, provoking reactions of panic, revealing social fissures, inequalities and the discrimination and stigmatization of marginalized groups in society. What had been defined as an emergency became a long-lasting problem which we have lived with now for a full decade. Because of its rapid spread, in particular in developing countries, in Africa and South America, the threat that AIDS represents to the social order takes on an international dimension. The inter-dependence of nations in the fight against AIDS has often been emphasized. Demands for international cooperation have become a commonplace amongst meetings and conferences and amongst experts. As shown in a collective volume about the United States, Brazil, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland and Australia, AIDS policies of the first decade "had to be designed and executed in conditions characterized at best by extreme uncertainty and at worst by plain ignorance." In addition, convictions poorly founded in empirical fact have opened the way to metaphors and inappropriate comparisons with past epidemics. Interesting and intellectually stimulating as such comparisons might be, they offer very limited guidance for research design and action in the epidemic we face today.
- Subjects
AIDS; PUBLIC health; EPIDEMICS; COMMUNICABLE diseases; EQUALITY; DEVELOPING countries
- Publication
Current Sociology, 1992, Vol 40, Issue 3, p1
- ISSN
0011-3921
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/001139292040003005