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Introduction: Politics as a Cause and Consequence of the AIDS Pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2006

Andrea Densham
Andrea Densham
Affiliation:
Densham Consulting, Chicago
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Extract

On June 5, 1981, an obscure public health bulletin published by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta first reported that five young men—“all active homosexuals”—had contracted a very rare pneumonia, the cause of which was entirely unknown. The report went on to note that two of the five men had died and that the other three were very ill. These were the first five reported cases in the United States of a deadly disease soon to be known around the world as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The public health and scientific communities have since learned that cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were also emerging simultaneously in Africa, Europe, and other parts of North America, but the 1981 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the first scientific documentation of HIV, marked the beginning of a global public health crisis. And it did so in ways that would shape the form and content of political discourse and dissent for decades to come.Andrea Densham, Principle of Densham Consulting in Chicago, is a health policy advocate and former health policymaker ([email protected]). She has written on social movements and health policy as they relate to LGBT health, HIV, and breast cancer.

Type
PERSPECTIVES
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 2006 , pp. 641 - 646
Copyright
2006 American Political Science Association

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