Of the more than 40 million people around the world currently living with HIV/AIDS, two million live in Latin America and the Caribbean. In an engaging chronicle illuminated by his travels in the region, Shawn Smallman shows how the varying histories and cultures of the nations of Latin America have influenced the course of the pandemic. He demonstrates that a disease spread in an intimate manner is profoundly shaped by impersonal forces. In Latin America, Smallman explains, the AIDS pandemic has fractured into a series of subepidemics, driven by different factors in each country. Examining cultural issues and public policies at the country, regional, and global levels, he discusses why HIV has had such a heavy impact on Honduras, for instance, while leaving the neighboring state of Nicaragua relatively untouched, and why Latin America as a whole has kept infection rates lower than other global regions, such as Africa and Asia. Smallman draws on the most recent scientific research as well as his own interviews with AIDS educators, gay leaders, drug traffickers, crack addicts, transvestites, and doctors in Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. Highlighting the realities of gender, race, sexuality, poverty, politics, and international relations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, Smallman brings a fresh perspective to understanding the cultures of the region as well as the global AIDS crisis.

This is the first book to comprehensively examine Latin America's literary response to the deadly HIV virus. Proposing a bio-political reading of AIDs in the neoliberal era, Lina Meruane examines how literary representations of AIDS enter into larger discussions of community, sexuality, nation, displacement and globalization.

The first book on the shocking reality of AIDS in Latin America.

In this collection of essays, Lawrence O. Gostin, an internationally recognized scholar of AIDS law and policy, confronts the most pressing and controversial issues surrounding AIDS in America and around the world. He shows how HIV/AIDS affects the entire population--infected and uninfected--by influencing our social norms, our economy, and our country's role as a world leader. Now in the third decade of this pandemic, the nation and the world still fail to respond to the needs of persons living with HIV/AIDS and continue to tolerate injustice in their treatment, Gostin argues. AIDS, both in the United States and globally, deeply affects poor and marginalized populations, and many U.S. policies are based on conservative moral values rather than public health and social justice concerns. Gostin tackles the hard social, legal, political, and ethical issues of the HIV/AIDS pandemic: privacy and discrimination, travel and immigration, clinical trials and drug pricing, exclusion of HIV-infected health care workers, testing and treatment of pregnant women and infants, and needle-exchange programs. This book provides an inside account of AIDS policy debates together with incisive commentary. It is indispensable reading for advocates, scholars, health professionals, lawyers, and the concerned public.

Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

In October 1999, the Forum on Emerging Infections of the Institute of Medicine convened a two-day workshop titled "International Aspects of Emerging Infections." Key representatives from the international community explored the forces that drive emerging infectious diseases to prominence. Representatives from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe made formal presentations and engaged in panel discussions. Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Global to the Local Perspective includes summaries of the formal presentations and suggests an agenda for future action. The topics addressed cover a wide range of issues, including trends in the incidence of infectious diseases around the world, descriptions of the wide variety of factors that contribute to the emergence and reemergence of these diseases, efforts to coordinate surveillance activities and responses within and across borders, and the resource, research, and international needs that remain to be addressed.

Thirty years after AIDS was first recognized, the American South constitutes the epicenter of the United States' epidemic. Southern states claim the highest rates of new infections, the most AIDS-related deaths, and the largest number of adults and adoles