Riled Up About HIV/AIDs

[mustbecrazy]

Reading EliasWake's post* on cancer made me remember the classes we had in elementary school on HIV/AIDs and Understanding Handicaps

Comments

[yafah]

HIV spooks people because it is a disease that isn't curable, but unlike cancer, which develops on its own or sometimes in response to something, it is transmitted from person to person. And I think people without education about the disease see people who have it as any person from any decade would see someone with any lethal disease, like tuberculosis or malaria - stay away, I don't want to get infected. But you can't get infected with HIV just by being near someone, or by holding hands, or whatever. And I think that since so many people have HIV, and so many people are living long lives with it, people feel that it's necessary to combat this gut instinct of "stay away from me," specifically in response to HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDs Awareness in the Early 1990s

[mustbecrazy]

True.

Also, when HIV was first discovered as something that affected the general population, people began to think of it as an infectious disease that had the potential of turning into an epidemic.

If I am remembering correctly, it seems like not as many people had cancer then either-- or at least not people we knew. So many families are affected now (coupled with the fact that I know so many more people than I did as a child), which is why I am more aware of it now compared to then.

Re: HIV/AIDs Awareness in the Early 1990s

[flawedpottery]

i think a lot of it had to do with the stigma attached to it in the 80s. And the fact that it is transmittable. I remember how it was one of those things that "bad people" caught, or gay men, and then they started showing lifetime movies about Ryan White and other kids. I think that's why they made such a big deal about teaching us to accept people with it and educating us. I think today's kids/teens and stuff are able to somehow navigate that better, they weren't exposed so much to the paranoia that we had as kids. Plus, I think it was probably the first time that a sexually transmitted disease would ravage you the way AIDS can.

[judiasverdes]

have you read randy shilts' "and the band played on"? it traces the history of the disease and responses to it in the early 1980s.

JS

[mustbecrazy]

You're alive!!!

The name sounds familiar, but less so the content. Sounds interesting, I'll keep it on my big list when I eventually get back to the US.

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