AIDS in the Industrialized Democracies: Passions, Politics, and Policies

John Jacono is an assistant professor of nursing at Laurentian
University.

The world has now had to live with the real as well as perceived effects
of AIDS for a decade. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this
disease has caused whole countries to confront, examine, and in many
cases adapt their entrenched social, political, cultural, and ethical
values.

The editors of this valuable text managed to convince social scientists
from 10 other industrialized democracies to examine the effects of AIDS
on their communities. Incidence, prevalence, age, and sex-specific
mortality are correlated with societal responses to the appearance and
spread of this disease. Countries that are geographically close enough
to share common borders sometimes reacted in remarkably diverse ways,
depending on the ethos of the governing political party, health-care
funding, and the evolutionary perception of the social contract. AIDS
very quickly became a label for either inclusion (co-operation between
the various interested segments of society) or exclusion (stigma and
containment of those afflicted).

It took the best part of the past decade for societies to realize the
potential of AIDS to wreak havoc if left unchecked. This resulted in the
adoption of relatively standard methods of treatment, education, and
prevention. Will the incidence of AIDS (at least in the industrialized
democracies represented) decrease as a result of this concerted
counterattack? More importantly, will the initial smug denials (a
feature of great epidemics throughout history) and the entrenched
appeals to visceral reactions be repeated when similarly dramatic
infectious-disease variants appear in the future?

It is in helping prepare an answer to the latter question that this
book excels. It has been said that those who forget history are
condemned to repeat it; this has certainly been the case with AIDS. This
book may just provide the impetus for a reassessment of many previously
held, country-specific beliefs; it may augur well for standardizing
educational, preventive, and rehabilitative international strategies in
the future.