International behavioral responses to a health hazard: AIDS
Earickson, R.J.
Social Science and Medicine 31(9): 951-962
1990
ISSN/ISBN: 0277-9536 PMID: 2255967 DOI: 10.1016/0277-9536(90)90104-zDocument Number: 372653
This paper expands on Jonathan Mann's third wave of the AIDS pandemic: the epidemic of economic, social, political, and cultural reaction and response to the HIV infection and to AIDS. This worldwide epidemic is a major economic challenge, especially in Third World countries, which can ill afford additional health care costs. AIDS is also a harbinger of political and cultural conflicts between and among nations, states, institutions, and people everywhere. It may ultimately transform law as radically as it has health care practices. In terms of management, it is possible to approach AIDS much as we do natural and technological hazards. The biology and epidemiology of AIDS require a coordinated attack, involving research on vaccines and drugs, modification of human behavior and education of populations to arrest the disease. All of these require money, of which the United States was the major contributor before the Reagan years. Funding to the United Nations and WHO has since languished, jeopardizing the AIDS efforts of those two organizations.