Medical Science and Prevention

Monday, September 13. 2004

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes how ideas spread through society, following "epidemic-like" dynamics. At one point he includes a provocative passage about AIDS, and what would have happened had we not discovered the virus. I include it here as food for thought:

"Not long after The Tipping Point came out, I happened to talk to an epidemiologist, a man who had spent the better part of his professional life battling the AIDS epidemic. He was a thoughtful fellow, and frustrated in the way that someone would be who has had to deal, on a daily basis, with such a terrible disease. We were sitting in a cafe talking about my book, which he had read, and then he said something startling: "I wonder if we would have been better off if we had never discovered the AIDS virus at all?" I don't think he meant that literally, or that he regretted the countless lives that have been saved or prolonged by anti-HIV drugs and the AIDS test. What he meant was this: that the AIDS epidemic is fundamentally a social phenomenon. It spreads because of the beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities of a community, and sometimes getting caught up in the precise biological characteristics of a virus merely serves as a distraction; we might have halted the spread of AIDS far more effectively just by focusing on those beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities."

Posted by Jim Cashel in Policy at 19:31 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. To prevent automatted Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Only if the strings match, your comment will be submitted. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

AIDS Matters

AIDS Matters is a Web resource for global AIDS professionals managed by Jim Cashel with the assistance of others. It is sponsored by Forum One Communications, a Washington, DC web strategy firm.