Abstract
HIV/AIDS exceptionalism promoted compassion, garnered funding, built institutions, and shaped regulatory and research agendas under emergency conditions. Globally, however, HIV/AIDS exceptionalism has further fragmented fragile health service delivery systems in vulnerable, marginalized communities and created perverse incentives to influence seropositive individuals' behaviors. Even where HIV epidemics are viewed as "controlled" or "resolved" (as in the United States), ending AIDS requires eliminating exceptionalism, normalizing justice-based approaches to HIV care, and explicitly acknowledging how power dynamics shape popular narratives and practices.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | E410-E417 |
| Journal | AMA Journal of Ethics |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2021 |
Funding
A.B.: In 1997, I enrolled in my first (and only) undergraduate anthropology course, “AIDS in International Perspective.” It was a small seminar—no more than a dozen students— for which we read hundreds of pages per week and, on a weekly basis, met someone from the AIDS community in southern New England. The course’s instructors also required us to volunteer in one of the many AIDS programs in our small state. I joined an AIDS peer-education group geared toward out-of-school youth and became the group’s co-leader the following year. Over the next 5 years, I worked for prison doctors who specialized in HIV treatment, interned in the Department for HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and consulted for a range of HIV/AIDS programs for international nongovernmental organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. Ten years after that first anthropology course, I completed dissertation fieldwork among HIV-positive Sierra Leoneans, funded by an AIDS training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health(social science)
- Health Policy
- Issues, ethics and legal aspects
