The Truth Of Aids Stigma Through The Lens Of Two Biomedical Professionals ' Memories Of The Aids Epidemic

At the Republican National Convention in 1992, no one was aware that Mary Fisher was about to alter the viewpoints of thousands of Americans. During the 1980’s and 90’s the public’s view on AIDS was uninformed, skewed, and ignorant. The purpose of Mary Fisher’s speech was to open up the conversation on AIDS and to inform the public of the deadly disease. Fisher’s speech came from a place of sorrow and passion because she and her newborn son were both diagnosed with AIDS. At this time, society deemed AIDS as only associated with homosexuals and that no straight person could contract it. Mary Fisher’s speech persuaded people to change their viewpoints on AIDS by the use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

With headlines in the news such as The Sun dubbing AIDS as the ‘gay plague’ it was an irresistible red rag to the bull for the media, even though in Africa other populations were infected right from the beginning. (Dowsett, W, Gary. 2009) In an excerpt from Simon Garfield’s The end of Innocence Britain in the time of AIDS, Roy Greensdale the assistant editor of the Sun from 1981 to 1986 recalls that ‘AIDS appeared to be just desserts for being involved in deviant sexual behaviour. It was quickly realized that it came about due to anal sex, and heterosexual executives on the Sun thus fed in the fact that it was a gay plague. AIDS tended to suggest that it might stop all that kind of behaviour, and might lead to fewer gays being about.’ The gay community has always been an easy target for hostility throughout history and when the controversy surrounding the AIDS panic began to surface it became another way in which to ostracise them for their ‘wages of sin’. (The Daily Telegraph). 1983).

According to Stanley Cohen (1972, pg. 9), moral panics occur when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests”, and is useful for explaining the hysteria in Western society towards the ‘pandemic’ of HIV/AIDS. Sociologists argue that there was a social construction around it’s meaning and the way in which it was perceived caused by an apparent social anxiety or prejudice against homosexuals and other minority groups. This essay will attempt to recognise the definition of ‘moral panics’ and its application to HIV/AIDS and its social construction.

Anyone who enters cannot leave the cell and therefore once an individual is infected, then, death is the only next probable thing. This painting attracted views from all persons and groups in our society after they realized that handling and addressing the AIDS epidemic is a collective responsibility. Discussions of disease, death, race, sex, drug addiction and homosexuality which are shunned by polite individuals became common topics (Mahoney, n.p.). Gatewood created a scenario where everyone had to acknowledge that the AIDS epidemic was now a threat that needed to be addressed immediately. Humanity ought to give the AIDS epidemic the weight it deserves by advocating everyone to play their role in this collective responsibility of reducing infections and deaths caused by the spread of HIV. Gatewood wanted humanity to realize the price they have to pay for their prudishness and ignorance of AIDS as a killer

Four years earlier he had been asked by his local hospital to come in for an Aids test. But the stigma surrounding the condition meant his family were not given a definitive picture.” - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/11/health.aids1

When a fatal disease becomes known to a society but lacks explanation our instinct as humans is to jump to conclusions, whether they are logical or not. We bargain with our faith, we search for any evidence to support our conjectures, we deny the truth of the disease, and we place blame on each other. All of these desperate acts of justification are driven by fear—fear of the unknown. The combination of fear and ignorance that pushes people to make conclusions is readily notable in the AIDS epidemic of Haiti. Haitians reacted to AIDS in a similar manner as other cultures, but there are also differences that are specific to their community. Like many cultures, Haitians reasoned the occurrence of AIDS with explanations beyond the scope of medicine, with diseases that were known to them, or were instead in complete denial. The uniqueness of the occurrence of AIDS in Haiti was that there was no direct cause that could be addressed. Thus, while under significant scrutiny as the origin of AIDS, Haitians reacted to the epidemic by blaming the existence of AIDS on poor socioeconomic status, on sorcery, and on other people or countries.

Stigma is shown throughout many subjects; obesity, mental illness and the most powerful and worse stigma; the stigma of AIDS. The stigma of AIDS is clearly shown through a powerful story set in the middle of the African HIV and AIDS pandemic. The novel Chanda’s secrets accurately demonstrates the stigma of AIDS by portraying characters blinded by fear, being ashamed, feeling sinful, and living in denial. The stigma is shown through a maturing young girl’s point of view, seeing others and as well as herself confronting the different ‘symptoms’ of the stigma and what steps both she and the other characters took to overcome them.

inevitable that AIDS would be defined in political and cultural terms as well as medically, and

In the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” FRONTLINE examines the outbreak of AIDS since its first diagnosed case in 1981. The film investigates different medical, political and social environments under AIDS pandemic in the US and worldwide. The film not only focuses on the scientific research and progress in treating the disease, it also looks at the social stigma, government strategies and public campaigns around different countries.

In the Radio Lab the Authors illustrates how HIV is spreading in United States and how the starting point begins as Patient Zero. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich along with Carl Zimmer and David Quammen discuss how in 1981 a mysterious syndrome it became in a pandemic among homosexual people in important cities such as Los Angeles Ney York and San Francisco. Young men were dying in inexplicable conditions that the CDC had to intervene with a several researches, surveys and studies about those cases. During the research noticed that one man were most related with more cases, this person was Gaetan Dugas, a Canadian young men, who travel to US. As he knew he was going to die, he stared to spread the disease for something he called a “gay cancer”.

The dawn of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980’s prompted delayed waves of responses sweeping out across America. First impacting a scattering of gay men in San Francisco, the disease gained the stigma of being a “gay disease” that fascinated the nation as health systems and communities struggled to cope with its rapid spread. However, one man, seemingly unaffected by the mix of panic and curiosity, did not react. The Ronald Reagan administration has historically been criticized for its lack of response to the AIDS crisis. Many different aspects of society were instead forced to step up and carry the burden of slowing and responding to the crisis, in a reactionary shift. The Reagan administration’s lackluster response to the AIDS crisis of the

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

The social and political milieu of the HIV/AIDS virus emerged in the gay communities of several metropolitan areas in the United States. When the virus emerged, it was a time of sexual freedom and gay liberation which created conditions that permitted the epidemic to spread rapidly. The milieu created AIDS activists and a number of community based organizations. With all of this in Burroughs Wellcome’s environment, exhibit 1 show that their proximate environment is AIDS patients, competitor’s treatments,

The film Dallas Buyers Club is a biographical drama whose plot is based around the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Early in the history of the illness, cases of a rare lung infection were found in five previously healthy young men. In addition to that, the young men all suffered from various other infections which indicated that their immune systems were not functioning properly. The new illness was so aggressive that before a report by the CDC could be published, two of the five men had succumbed to the illness. Besides the similar rare cases of lung infection amongst the five, there was one other shared characteristic; they were all gay men. By years’ end, there were 270 reported cases in gay men with the same disease; of that 270 however, 121 of those individuals had passed (Timeline of HIV/AIDS,2011). It was now clear that there was a new threat to gay men besides social ostracizing; HIV/AIDS had made its presence known.

Monette recalls his thoughts after reading the first serious report about AIDS and not finding any signs of the disease in himself at the time. He felt “relieved” and “safe” and thought that he and his friend were not in immediate danger even though they were in one of the high-risk social groups. For several years after that report, he subconsciously denied the possibility of becoming sick, reasoning that AIDS killed “them,” gays from different social classes or leading promiscuous sexual life. Monette thought he and his friend were different.