anthropology. Because the virus is usually transmitted through intimate contact, because anthropologists do have intimate knowledge of the people they study, it may be true, as has so often been claimed, that we have a special role to play in addressing the spread of HIV. But in our eagerness to fight the good fight, anthropology should not forget its often disturbing record on the sharing of special knowledge, its troubled history of collaboration with national and colonial bureaucracies, the mixed fortunes of applied anthropology, its sluggishness in facing the moral dilemmas native to our undertaking in a world in which power is so unevenly distributed. We should not leave unchallenged the messianic optimism of colleagues who predict harmonious and fruitful collaboration with those charged with curbing the spread of HIV.
I believe that careful consideration of topics discussed above will lead anthropologists to the conclusion that, yes, there are ways to share our special knowledge. But how? when? and with whom? In what other ways might we make morally sound contributions to efforts to alleviate the suffering caused by HIV? The manner in which anthropologists participate in "the fight against AIDS" is critical. Given the dim prospects for a vaccine in the near future, and the even dimmer prospects for a cure, it seems safe to say that the anthropological study of HIV poses ethical problems that are unlikely to disappear. To continue to scant this debate by dismissing it as paranoid or obscuring would be lethal to anthropological investigations of AIDS. For wherever AIDS has surfaced, we have seen, accusation has not been far behind. Let us engage these issues before we ourselves are accused of exploiting inequality and anxiety to enhance the status of the already empowered.
I am grateful to Douglas A. Feldman, Arthur Kleinman, Steven Nachman, Jeffrey Parsonnet, and Haun Saussy for their comments on drafts of this chapter. A special debt is owed to Marie-Marcelle Deschamps, a talented and committed physician, and to my Haitian hosts and coworkers, who prefer to be unnamed.
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