A Unified Front Against AIDS
research unfeasible and undesirable. How can science take direction without some initial knowledge to light the way? Without this knowledge, any direction imposed on the research would be misguided, and the situation would rapidly become a case of the blind leading the blind. The true problems in the response to the discovery of AIDS, however, occurred after research illuminated the nature of the disease, providing goals and direction toward which further research could strive.
Upon receiving the first reports of Kaposi’s sarcoma, an opportunistic infection common to immuno-suppressed individuals, in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, most physicians viewed the phenomenon as localized to the population of homosexual men. This perception served as an impediment for inciting interest in AIDS research. The homosexual community also received little attention from the media because of a lack of interest in a disease confined to a marginalized group. The minute proportion of media attention allotted to the early AIDS crisis produced a two-fold effect: it did little to encourage research on a disease in which no one seemed interested, and it also did not engender a great deal of public support for the cause against AIDS. In effect, the problem was cyclical. The public did not receive enough exposure to the disease to create an outcry over the lack of research, and researchers did not see enough interest in the disease to warrant involvement. Add to this the fact that the primary group of infected individuals were homosexual men—a group that carried enormous social stigmas even before their association with AIDS—and the problem of engendering research interest seems daunting, indeed.
The social stigmas revealed in the discussion concerning the lack of interest in research lead directly into a discussion of the role of ethics and social politics in the response to the early AIDS crisis. Once the agent of infection was determined to be a virus, and the virus was localized to certain high-risk groups, the effects of ethics and social pressures on the course of public response to the disease became clear. Most notably, the manner of AIDS transmission created a problem concerning potential violations of civil rights and personal privacy. This problem proved even more daunting before an accurate and reliable test for the presence of the HIV virus (or, as in current testing, for the viral antibodies) was developed and made widely available.
Before the advent of the HIV test, researchers understood the blood-borne nature of the virus. Its presence in the blood posed a serious threat to the nation’s blood supply. To screen against potentially infected blood in the early 1980’s, blood banks began to screen donors through interviews and questionnaires intended to eliminate potential high-risk donors from the pool of applicants. This screening presented a number of difficulties. The probe into the lives and behaviors of individuals attempting to donate blood seemed to violate a certain level of personal privacy, discouraging potential donors. It would prove difficult for a potential donor to admit to certain lifestyle choices and behaviors which [next page]