Introduction by the author
‘Well before AIDS, one already knew that illness and medicine are invested on a symbolic map, objects of a construction of meaning as much as of an elaboration of knowledge. From this point of view AIDS seems to constitute, for the researcher in social science, the opportunity of an almost too perfect demonstration.’
Herzlich and Pierret ( 1988, 48)
This book is about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). No single work can begin to encompass its worldwide impact, for AIDS pervades social, economic, ethical, historical, and medical aspects of our lives. Instead, I have deliberately chosen the biomedical moment as my focus and in doing so, have created an ethnography of medicine as much as an ethnography of AIDS. The reader might recognize the experience of her mother’s cancer, or her patient’s heart disease in these pages. And yet . . . AIDS is different. How the medical community defines these differences and responds to them lies at the heart of this book.