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Plague Doctors highlights culturally based differences between French and American medicine, not only in health care delivery, but in the way each system constructs the interaction between disease and the human body. This work challenges the assumption that biomedicine is uniform across the western ...

Plague Doctors highlights culturally based differences between French and American medicine, not only in health care delivery, but in the way each system constructs the interaction between disease and the human body. This work challenges the assumption that biomedicine is uniform across the western world. The author, a medical doctor and anthropologist, provides an ethnographic look into the daily experiences of physicians and researchers, examining how members of the French and American medical communities construct their models of AIDS through discourse and practice. The book is based on a comparative study of two AIDS clinics, one in Chicago and the other in Paris. Participant observation conducted at the clinics and interviews with physicians and researchers outside the sites yielded important insights into the world of AIDS medicine.

Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV & AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural ...

Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV & AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler's related writings, including revised & updated essays from the 1980s & 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable & interdisciplinary standpoint. "AIDS is more than an epidemic disease," Treichler writes. "It is an epidemic of meanings." Exploring how such meanings originate, proliferate, & take hold, her essays investigate how certain interpretations of the epidemic dominate while others are obscured. They also suggest ways to understand & choose between overlapping or competing discourses. In her coverage of roughly fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic, Treichler addresses a range of key issues, from biomedical discourse & theories of pathogenesis to the mainstream media's depictions of the crisis in both developed & developing countries. She also examines representations of women & AIDS, treatment issues, & the role of activism in shaping the politics of the epidemic. Linking the AIDS tragedy to a broad spectrum of contemporary theory & culture, this collection concludes with an essay on the continued importance of theoretical thought for untangling the sociocultural phenomena of AIDS-& for tackling the disease itself. With an exhaustive bibliography of critical & theoretical writings on HIV & AIDS, this long-awaited volume will be essential to all those invested in studying the course of AIDS, its devastating medical effects, & its massive impact on contemporary culture. It should become a standard text in university courses dealing with AIDS in biomedicine, sociology, anthropology, gay & lesbian studies, women's studies, & cultural & media studies.

Like other dangerous but pleasurable activities, such as downhill skiing and mountain climbing, engaging in unprotected sex implicitly involves the weighing of costs and benefits. Recognizing that the transmission of the AIDS virus is a consequence of personal choices - often rational and informed - ...

Like other dangerous but pleasurable activities, such as downhill skiing and mountain climbing, engaging in unprotected sex implicitly involves the weighing of costs and benefits. Recognizing that the transmission of the AIDS virus is a consequence of personal choices - often rational and informed - to engage in risky conduct, the authors employ the tools of economic analysis to reassess the orthodox approach to AIDS by public health specialists. Standard predictions of the spread of AIDS, the authors argue, are questionable because they ignore rational behavioral responses to the risk of infection. For the same reason, customary recommended public health measures, such as extensive testing for the AIDS virus, not only may be ineffective in controlling the spread of the disease but may actually cause it to spread more rapidly. The authors examine regulatory measures and proposals such as mandatory testing, criminal punishments, and immigration controls, as well as the subsidization of AIDS education and medical research, the social and fiscal costs of AIDS, the political economy of the government's response, and the interrelation of AIDS and fertility risk. Neither liberal nor conservative, yet on the whole skeptical about governmental involvement in the epidemic, this book is certain to be controversial, but its injection of hard-headed economic thinking into the AIDS debate is long overdue. Although Private Choices and Public Health is accessible to the interested general reader, it will also capture the attention of economists - especially those involved in health issues - epidemiologists, public health officials, and specialists in sexual behavior and drug addiction.