HIV/AIDS Flashcards
(215 cards)
What do AIDS and HIV stand for?
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Gilman (1987), Social construction of AIDS
People have been stigmatized (and destroyed) as much by the “idea” of AIDS as by its reality.
Gilman (1987), Iconography of disease
Icons of disease appear to have an existence independent of the reality of any given disease
Disease is thus restricted to a specific set of images, thereby forming a visual boundary, a limit to the idea (or fear) of disease
It is in the world of representations that we manage our fear of disease, isolating it as surely as if we had placed it in quarantine
AIDS cases first identified (though not understood as AIDS)
1979 Alvin Friedman-Kien of New York University Medical Center identified a group of patients suffering from a rare form of cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), which presents striking symptoms, bluish or purple-brown lesions on the skin
Normal course of the disease seldom fatal, but these young patients were dying within eight to twenty-four months of their diagnoses
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), initial attempts to construct image of the patient
- living in large urban areas (New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) - all young men
- all homosexual
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), June 5 1981 - noted the patients’ sexual orientation, and more importantly its “quality”: ‘Two of the
five [patients] reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various
partners’
Emergence of gay-related immunodeficiency (GRID) label
first quarter of 1982
Gilman 1987, initial understanding of AIDS
specific subset of the larger category of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), as a disease from which homosexuals suffered as a direct result of their sexual practices and related “life-style” -for example, the use of “poppers”
fact that AIDS appeared in the late 1970s served to link the disease to two unrelated social concerns: first, the perception of an increase in STDs in the US (following a period of perceived decline), signalled in 1975 by the declaration of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases that research into STDs was its number one priority; and second, the growth of public awareness -at least in large urban areas - of the gay liberation movement, which followed in the wake of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969
AIDS was characterized not as a viral disease, such as Hepatitis B, but as a sexually transmitted disease, such as syphilis.
Appearance of syndrome among groups such as haemophiliacs and IV drug users first recorded by the MMWR
late 1982
Gilman (1987), AIDS and Syphilis
Stresses link between iconographies of AIDS and syphilis:
appropriation of the iconography of syphilis for the representation of people with AIDS is not random; it is, rather, a result of the perception that the sexual orientation of people with AIDS was determinant, and that these people suffered from a sexually transmitted disease
“taming” of syphilis and other STDs with the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s left our culture with a series of images of mortally infected and infecting people suffering a morally repugnant disease -without a sufficiently powerful disease to function as the referent of these images.
Gilman (1987), Syphilis iconography over time
August 1, 1496, the first visual representation of the syphilitic appeared in a broadside written by Theodoricus Ulsenius and illustrated by Albrecht Diirer
- portrayed as a victim of the signs of the zodiac, which determine his affliction. The syphilitic is seen as isolated, visually recognizable by his signs and symptoms, and sexually deviant
Enlightenment - image of the syphilitic shifts from male to female, and shift from victim to source of infection. Prostitute/ seductress as source of pollution
by the nineteenth-century “vice” has become “disease,” seduction has become infection
Gilman (1987), AIDS iconography over time
In a photograph that appeared in the New York Times on December 23, 1985, we see an image of the PWA as a patient isolated from the supposed act of healing (parallel to the images of the exemplary syphilitic). The sense of physical distance is palpable
1985 (and subsequently), the New York Times was full of articles on the anxiety of health workers treating people with AIDS.
This is a homosexual male, both victim and cause of his own pollution. Already feminized in the traditional view of his sexuality, the gay man can now also represent the conflation of the images of the male sufferer and the female source of suffering traditionally associated with syphilis.
association of the “AIDS victim” with the traditional iconography of melancholy is an extraordinarily powerful one; it reappeared as the first illustration for an update on AIDS in the popular scientific journal Discover in September 1986
But the Discover photograph not only draws the analogy with the despair of impending death. Through a broader analogy extended to the “general population,” which is seen to suffer from “unwarranted” AIDS phobia, it in- tends the PWA to function as a stand-in for the mental illness (read: fearful fantasy) of an entire nation
AIDS is perceived as endemic to cities, which have traditionally been seen as harborers of disease and degeneracy.33
Thus arises the seemingly natural association among three quite distinct groups perceived as corrupt city-dwellers: homosexuals, IV drug users, and Haitians. And purity lives where nature dominates: on the farm and in the small town
Gilman (1987), AIDS and race/ geography
Blacks were deemed to be at risk because of their perceived sexual difference- their “hypersexuality”-as well as their “sociopathic” use of drugs. Black sexuality, associated with images of sexually transmitted disease, became a category of marginalization, as it had in the past. But in the 1980s, after the intolerable state of blacks in this country was made visible by the civil rights movement in the ’60s and ’70s, it was no longer so easy to locate the source of disease among American blacks
Instead, the source of pollution was perceived to be foreign blacks, black Africans and Haitians, and thus American “liberal” sensibilities were assuaged even while speculations about the origin of AIDS continued to be determined by American racist ideology.
withdrawal of the “risk group” label from Haitians followed a period of severe persecution. To be Haitian and living in New York City meant that you were perceived as an AIDS “carrier.”
The pattern of infection in the US, where the disease existed only among marginal groups (including blacks), was understood as characterizing a later phase of the disease’s history. It was only in “higher” cultures, such as the United States, that the disease was limited to such specific groups as could be immediately and visually identifiable.
transmission of HIV in black Africa has its roots in the imposition of models of Western medicine. The status of Western medicine and its association with inoculation is so high that no medical treatment, even by indigenous medical practitioners, is considered complete without an injection.32 Due to the prohibitive cost of needles and syringes, blood is passed from patient to patient as the needle is used and reused. It is thus not the fantasized perverted nature of black sexuality that is at the core of the transmission of the disease in Africa
AIDS is popularly perceived in Europe as born in the USA
For the Soviets the geographic origin of the disease is also the US: the HIV virus was man-made by the biological warfare specialists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in conjunction with the scientists at the CDC.
This attempt to place the blame for AIDS on the United States worked only until the spring of 1987, when the Soviets, in the climate of glasnost, admitted that they, too, had indigenous cases of the disease.
1985 and 1986, “orthodox” Soviet view was that homosexuality-and thus AIDS-was a
pathological reflex of the late forms of capitalism which would (and did) vanish once the Soviet state was created
Gilman (1987), Potency of AIDS stigma
permeated social categories ordinarily exempt from stigma. In 1985, two community school boards in Queens sued the New York City Board of Education in order to exclude a seven-year old child, diagnosed as having AIDS, from the school system
Gilman (1987), the psychological importance of stigma
It clearly defines the boundaries of pollution, limiting the risk to the homosexual (and those other groups now stigmatized), and thus confines heterosexuals’ fears about their own vulnerability
Gilman (1987), shifting public understandings of AIDS late 1980s
By the spring of 1987 the public understanding of AIDS as a disease not limited to specific marginal groups had begun to grow. The statement of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in support of extending information about condoms, together with increased media attention to heterosexual transmission, meant that by March 1987 the majority of those tested in the public AIDS clinics in New York and San Francisco were heterosexuals.
However, shift -from male victim to female (outside limits of social respectability) as source of pollution - clearly repeating the history of the iconography of syphilis.
in a cartoon of mid-March 1987, J. D. Crowe of the San Diego Tribune depicted the source of heterosexual transmission as a group of prostitutes proffering death.
Fee, Krieger (1993), significance of historical study of AIDS
offers a complex and vivid example of the ways in which people create multiple, contested explanations of health and illness.
Fee, Krieger (1993), first of three clashing paradigms of AIDS
conceived of primarily as a “gay plague,” by analogy with the sudden, devastating epidemics of the past
epidemiologists struck by its seemingly exotic preference for young, homosexual men; they therefore searched for causes in the behaviors or “life-styles” common to gay men
looked for risk factors prevalent in this “risk group” and indicted life in the fast lane, including “promiscuity,” “poppers” (amyl nitrate), and anal sex.
researchers at first ignored the cases of AIDS that did not fit the gay plague model
however, shift to “4-H risk groups”: homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs, and heroin addicts
In popular perception, all members of the identified risk groups were seen as potentially contagious; from there it was but a short step to perceive those populations as “responsible” for AIDS.
This in turn led to the prevalent media descriptions of the “innocent victims” of disease, such as hemophiliacs and children; by implication, the others were “guilty” culprits.
unmediated associations between homosexuality and disease that appeared in the declarations of rightwing ideologues, who lost no opportunity to castigate homosexuals in the name of “family values” and the “American way of life.”
In 1983, the identification of HIV, the AIDS virus, led to a new phase of the epidemic, in which AIDS was clearly characterized as an infectious disease.”
Once the virus was identified, scientists tended to lose interest in the social factors accompanying transmission. Theyinstead turned to laboratory studies of the virus
virus was perceived as something easy to catch; the idea that AIDS was caused by a virus, along with vague announcements about bodily fluids, may well have increased fears of casual transmission
many people in the United States simultaneously embraced scientific, traditional, and folk explanations of AIDS, with little sense of contradiction. Ideas of “magical contagion” led otherwise well-informed people to fear contact with AIDS patients. For example, one study found that most people would refuse to wear a sweater previously worn by an AIDS patient
scientific search for biomedical risk factors, agents, and other proximate causes of disease had failed to satisfy the broader need for ultimate explanations-the “why” and not just the “how” of disease causation.
Among health professionals, the identification of HIV seemed to clarify strategies for AIDS prevention. It shifted attention away from the early risk-group designations and highlighted the importance of risk behaviors, thus focusing attention on specific acts rather than on sexual identities.
Condoms advocated.
Opposed by right wing set against nonmarital sex.
Providing individuals with clean needles was problematic because many people perceived the distribution of needles and bleach as a possible encouragement of drug use.
Many African Americans were convinced that these programs were part of a long-standing, White-led genocidal policy against Blacks, and they called instead for drug treatment programs and jobs. By contrast, many conservatives simply wanted drug addicts thrown into jail.
Prevention methods to curtail blood transmission were similarly framed in individualistic terms. People were urged to refrain from donating blood if they had any reason to believe they were at risk for HIV infection; people needing blood were encouraged to store their own blood prior to surgery or to collect blood from family
and friends. Blood was now increasingly seen as an individual possession.
Ultimately, the identification of HIV and the discovery of a blood test for HIV antibodies made possible the traditional approach to infectious disease control - identification of those infected, followed by isolation, quarantine, or other societal action to cut off transmission - and led to battles over testing immigrants, blood donors, and individuals considered to be at risk.
From the biomedical and epidemiological point of view, if individuals knew their serostatus, they would more readily change behaviors
However, this logic ignored the complex power dynamics of sexual relationships. Did not consider the social reality of discrimination in health insurance, jobs, and housing that faced those diagnosed as HIV positive
also ignored the ethical problem that, in the early stages of the epidemic, no therapy was available; testing exposed the individual to considerable social risk while offering no medical benefit.
Fee, Krieger (1993), gay and lesbian communities’ activism
rejection of concept of ‘innocent’/ ‘guilty’ AIDS victims and divisions caused by categorisaiton of seropositive and seronegative
These communities had a recently formed, self-conscious sense of their social and political identity, forged in part out of a successful struggle with the medical establishment over the psychiatric definition of homosexuality as a pathological disorder.
The epidemiologists’ apparently neutral categories were perceived as an attempt to resurrect the earlier biomedical construction of homosexuality as a sickness
Identification of HIV
1983
Fee, Krieger (1993), second of three clashing paradigms of AIDS
In the second paradigm, AIDS was normalized as a chronic disease to be managed medically over the long term
predictions about the massive spread of AIDS throughout the entire US population-the threatened “heterosexual explosion”-had not been fulfilled. Indeed, statisticians were revising downward the early estimates of the number of HIVinfected persons.
Researchers and health care professionals shifted the focus of their concern from etiology to pathology and from prevention to potential therapies. The development of palliative treatments such as azidothymidine (AZT) for people with AIDS (and, later, for those who were HIV positive) placed new emphasis on health services, as reflected in the growing numbers of dedicated AIDS units for both inpatient and outpatient care
AIDS was becoming just another expensive disease, like cancer, with which the medical system could cope
When first conceived of as an infectious chronic disease, AIDS was likened to such diseases as tuberculosis and syphilis
Funding now flowed for studies of the natural history of AIDS, AIDS pathology, and clinical trials.
Few research dollars were expended on studies designed to improve prevention. The US Congress, for example, canceled two national surveys of sexual behaviour
Testing for HIV was now encouraged more as a means of drawing infected people into early treatment than as an incentive to modify behavior.
People with AIDS explored alternative therapies and unconventional drugs
Many rejected the exclusively tragic imagery of dying in favor of diverse representations of living with AIDS. Their work incorporated the voices, faces, and experiences of people with AIDS,
As AIDS touched every aspect of public life, from art to politics to sports, increasing popular awareness of the disease led to growing acceptance of people with AIDS. When the basketball star Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive, he was wamily applauded for his honesty and bravery.
language of guilt was less often applied to people ill with AIDS, but the distinction between innocent and guilty “victims” lingered, as seen in the general hysteria over infected health care workers
Fee, Kreiger (1993), model of chronic disease
chronic diseases are debilitating and often fatal conditions that are slow to develop, persist for many years, and require long-term management
Research focuses on disease mechanisms, usually at the cellular level, and increasingly concentrates on genetic determinants. Based on this understanding of disease, health interventions most commonly emphasize screening, early detection, and treatment, not primary prevention
Fee, Krieger (1993), Lack of med knowledge about AIDS
One study found that more than 80% of a national sample of primary care physicians said lacked info about AIDS
Surveys found that most people obtained information about AIDS from the mass media, family, and friends, and that fewer than 10% had ever discussed the disease with their physician.
Fee, Kreiger (1993), successes of AIDS activism
Reflecting their success and also the growing understanding of the progression of HIV disease, the Centers for Disease Control revised its diagnostic definition of AIDS in 1991 to include T-cell counts and, in 1992, to include cervical cancer and pulmonary tuberculosis among HIV-associated diseases.
Food and Drug Administration agreed to streamline its procedures for drug approval.
Reflecting the clash between the first and second paradigms of AIDS, other AIDS activists questioned the singleminded focus on treatment and emphasized prevention.
AIDS activists initially forced a major shift in the old public health approach to infectious disease control: for example, constraints on or quarantine of those infected.
political strength of the gay movement engendered within public health circles a new sensitivity to issues of stigma
Fee, Krieger (1993), critique of chronic disease model
In accepting the chronic disease model’s emphasis on pathology and treatment, many scientists and health care professionals have lost sight of the fact that AIDS is both infectious and preventable
Although the incidence rates of a few cancers (e.g., stomach cancer) have declined, often for unknown reasons, the rates for many other types of cancer are stable or increasing.
While preventive interventions based on the chronic disease model have stressed individually oriented dietary and behavioral modifications, it is unclear how much health behaviors have really altered.