Abstract
Upon its emergence in the western world in the early 1980s, AIDS marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of communicable disease. In the early stages of the epidemic there was a distinct lack of knowledge about the causation or transmission of the disease, rendering control of the situation a practical impossibility. It was clear that AIDS necessitated a definitive response from several sectors of society. With its apparent associations with then largely marginalised groups of society, namely homosexuals and injecting drug users, virtually no aspects of the response to AIDS were free from the influence of social and political perceptions of the disease and its victims. The US and the UK have strong political and cultural links and in this essay I will compare the responses of these two nations to the AIDS epidemic at a scientific, political and community level and explore the interactions which occurred therein.
Highlights
While the exact origin of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still the subject of much controversy, the syndrome first became manifest clinically in Los Angeles
It was clear from the statistics alone that AIDS had the potential to be a significant burden on health services in both nations and that an urgent response was required to reduce the impact of the burgeoning epidemic
The early 1980s saw the emergence of the “New Right” movement under Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government in the UK4 and the Ronald Reagan administration in the US,[6] which was to have an undeniable influence on shaping the response to AIDS
Summary
While the exact origin of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still the subject of much controversy, the syndrome first became manifest clinically in Los Angeles. Whereas the conservative American government was determined to maintain the focus on “innocent” victims of AIDS, many policy makers in the UK feared that aiming a campaign at the homosexual community could be criticized as homophobic and may trigger a backlash from the gay community,[4] some conservative ministers still voiced concerns of promoting immoral behaviours in parliamentary debates.[22] For many communities affected by AIDS, government intervention was still seen as inadequate because AIDS patients were still dying in large numbers in the absence of effective treatments.[3,5] Frustrations about the apparent government inactivity peaked in the US in 1987, leading a group of activists in New York to form the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP),[23] an activist organization which listed “the establishment of a coordinated, comprehensive and compassionate national policy on AIDS” among their demands.[24] The first ACT UP demonstration took place on Wall Street in 1987 and, in the same year, the coalition arranged a march on Washington, where an international conference on AIDS was being held.[25] The demonstration succeeded in attracting significant media attention and clearly indicated, in the US at least, that activists from within the gay self-help community were willing to assume a more militant role to achieve their aims. The UK saw no such activist response, some prominent members of gay self-help organizations spoke out in support of the ACT UP protests in the US and argued that activism should be encouraged as part of the response to AIDS in the UK.[26]
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