No Longer Disabled: The Legal Impact of the New Social Construction of HIV

Abstract

The second social construction of HIV disease has begun. In the first fifteen years of the HIV epidemic, many viewed the disease “as the modern plague.” Now, as the epidemic matures and new “miracle treatments" are heralded, the disease is beginning to conjure a very different set of images. Where once AIDS was dreaded as the inexplicable cataclysm of the end of the millennium, now, as the virus appears amenable to treatment, we are beginning to see the disease as something both preventable and controllable, no longer beyond human direction. And, where the disease was once synonymous with death, disability, and decline, we now witness stories of miracle recoveries and long-term survival. In the minds of many, the terminal disease has become the chronic disease; the dreaded plague has become but another social problem.In most respects, the new social construction of HIV, emerging from the advent of potentially effective medical interventions, is a positive development.