Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:58:55.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Genesis of Fear: AIDS and the Public's Response to Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Extract

The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) crisis has aroused scientists to major research efforts and the public at times to near-hysteria. The media and their audience eagerly await the latest scientific reports, yet the public seems to respond selectively, embracing the most frightening interpretation of the data and discounting attempts to place those data in perspective. One might be tempted to conclude that questions of public health policy are best dealt with by expert judgment unsullied by lay opinion. Yet such an attitude supposes scientists to be governed by pure reason and to be beyond influence by narrow self-interest or by political or moralistic considerations, a self-serving assumption belied by an examination of the record. The erosion of public confidence in science has indeed bedeviled health authorities in their efforts to generate consensus on the policies they wish to implement, but the public response—including the response of scientists to AIDS—is a far more complex phenomenon.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Conte, JE Jr. et al., Infection-control guidelines for patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), New England Journal of Medicine 1983, 309: 740.Google Scholar
Id. at 743.Google Scholar
Dershowitz, A, Emphasize scientific information, New York Times, March 18, 1986.Google Scholar
Powell, JH, Bring out your dead: The great plague of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949.Google Scholar
See Parnick, MS, Politics, parties, and pestilence: Epidemic yellow fever in Philadelphia and the rise of the first party system, in Leavitt, JW, Numbers, RL, eds., Sickness and health in America, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978: 241–56.Google Scholar
Id. at 242.Google Scholar
Id. at 243.Google Scholar
Id. at 246–47.Google Scholar
Id. at 247.Google Scholar
Id. at 245.Google Scholar
Smith, BE, Black, Lung: The social production of disease, International Journal of Health Services 1981, 11: 343, 346.Google ScholarPubMed
Pub.L. 91–173, 83 Stat. 742 (1969) (codified as amended at 30 U.S.C. §801 [1982]).Google Scholar
Black Lung Benefits Reform Art of 1977, Pub.L. 95–239, 92 Stat. 95 (1978) (codified at 30 U.S.C. §801 [1982]).Google Scholar
See, e.g., Wise, PH et al., Racial and socioeconomic disparities in childhood mortality in Boston, New England Journal of Medicine 1985, 313: 360; Lurie, N et al., Termination from Medi-Cal—Does it affect health?, New England Journal of Medicine 1984, 311:480.Google ScholarPubMed
See, e.g., Graham, GG, Poverty, hunger, malnutrition, prematurity, and infant mortality in the United States, Pediatrics 1985, 75: 117; Guyer, B et al., Anthropometric evidence of malnutrition among low-income children in Massachusetts in 1983, Massachusetts Journal of Community Health 1985, 2:3.Google ScholarPubMed
See, e.g., Centers for Disease Control, Pneumocystis pneumonia—Los Angeles, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1981, 30: 258; Centers for Disease Control, Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia among homosexual men—New York City and California, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1981, 30:305.Google Scholar
See, e.g., Walzer, PD et al., Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in the United States: Epidemiologic, diagnostic and clinical features, Annals of Internal Medicine 1974, 80:83.Google ScholarPubMed
Crosby, AW, Epidemic and peace, 1918, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Viseltear, AJ, A short political history of the 1976 swine influenza legislation, in Osborn, JE, ed., Influenza in America, Prodist, N.Y., 1977.Google Scholar
Crosby, , Epidemic and peace, supra note 19, at 216.Google Scholar
Crosby, , The influenza pandemic of 1918, in Viseltear, supra note 20, at 11.Google Scholar
Viseltear, , supra note 20, at 3940.Google Scholar
Institute of Medicine, Report of the committee on a national policy for AIDS, Washington: National Academy Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Dershowitz, , supra note 3.Google Scholar
See, gen., Douglas, M, Purity and danger, London: Routledge & Kegan, 1966: 114–28.Google Scholar
Biggar, RJ, The AIDS problem in Africa, Lancet 1986, i: 7982.Google Scholar
Vogt, MW et al., Isolation of HTLV-III/LAV from cervical secretions of women at risk for AIDS, Lancet 1986, i: 525–29.Google Scholar
Buckley, WF, Identify all the carriers, New York Times, March 18, 1986.Google Scholar
Foreman, J, Mass. neurosurgeon suggests quarantine for AIDS carriers, Boston Globe, November 21, 1985.Google Scholar
See Friedland, GH et al., Lack of transmission of HTLV-III/LAV infection to household contacts of patients with AIDS or AIDS-related complex with oral candidiasis, New England Journal of Medicine 1986, 314: 344–49.Google ScholarPubMed
Sydenham, T, cited in Temkin, O, Medicine and the problem of moral responsibility, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1949, 23: 1, 89.Google Scholar
See, gen., Brandt, AM, No magic bullet: A social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Id. at 23.Google Scholar
Id. at 46.Google Scholar
Stokes, JH, The practitioner and the antibiotic age of venereal disease control, Journal of Venereal Disease Information 1950, 31: 1, 13.Google ScholarPubMed
Carlen, R, Letter to the editor: Against free care for sexually transmitted diseases, New England Journal of Medicine 1982, 307: 1350.Google Scholar
See, gen., Neustadt, RE, Fineberg, HV, The swine flu affair: Decision-making on a slippery disease, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978.Google ScholarPubMed
The new untouchables, Time Magazine, September 23, 1985: 24.Google Scholar
See Barre-Sinoussi, F et al., Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), Science 1983, 220:868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Gallo, RC et al., Isolation of human T-cell leukemia virus in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), Science 1983, 220:865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petricciani, JC, Licensed test for antibody to human T-lymphotropic virus type III, Annals of Internal Medicine 1985, 103: 727–29.Google ScholarPubMed
Friedland, et al., supra note 32.Google Scholar
Goedert, JJ, Decreased helper T lymphocytes in homosexual men, II: Sexual practices, American Journal of Epidemiology 1985, 121: 637–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conant, M et al., Condoms prevent the transmission of AIDS-associated retrovirus, Journal of the American Medical Association 1986, 255: 1706.Google ScholarPubMed
McKusick, L et al., Reported changes in the sexual behavior of men at risk for AIDS, San Francisco, 1982–1984, Public Health Report 1985, 100: 822–28; Centers for Disease Control, Self-reported behavior change among gay and bisexual men—San Francisco, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1985, 34: 613-15; Centers for Disease Control, Update: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome—United States, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1986, 35: 17-21.Google Scholar
Zelnick, M, Kantner, JF, Sexual activity, contraceptive use and pregnancy among metropolitan area teenagers: 1971–1979, Family Planning Perspectives 1980, 12: 230–37.Google Scholar
Hardwick v. Georgia, 106 S. Ct. 2841 (1986).Google Scholar
Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, wrote: “The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy…. Depriving individuals of the right to choose for themselves how to conduct their intimate relationships poses a far greater threat to the values most deeply rooted in our nation's history than tolerance of non-conformity could ever do” (id.).Google Scholar
Des Jarlais, DC et al., Risk reduction for the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome among intravenous drug users, Annals of Internal Medicine 1985, 103: 755–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buning, EE et al., Preventing AIDS in drug addicts in Amsterdam, Lancet 1986, i: 1435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, AB, The environment and disease: Association or causation?, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 1965, 58: 292300.Google ScholarPubMed