Threat Of AIDS Research Articles

The Assessment of Misconceptions of HIV/AIDS, Stigma to HIV and Perceived Susceptibility to HIV/AIDS in Iranian University Students

Background: AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease that can expose a person at risk with the onset of unprotected sexual behavior from adolescence. This study aimed to assess the misconceptions of HIV/AIDS, stigma in adolescents infected with AIDS and the perceived threats of HIV/AIDS in the Iranian college students. Methods: This cross sectional study was performed in Shahroud city, Iran. 1500 female and male students in the age bracket of 18-24 were included in the study. Multistage sampling was employed. After obtaining permission from the universities and stating the objective of the study, the questionnaires (HIV misconception, Stigma to HIVand PerceivedSusceptibility to HIV/AIDS) were distributed to students during the end of lecture time upon the agreement of the education officials and were then collected after 15 minutes. To ensure that the information provided remain confidential, students were asked not to write down their names and fields of study. Data were analyzed using SPSS software, version 20 and descriptive-analytical statistics, such as percentage, mean scores, t-test Spearman, and chi-squared and Pearson tests. Results: The results showed that 919 students (61.2%) were female and 539 students (36.1%) were male. The results of the present study indicated that there is false information and beliefs on AIDS among the Iranian adolescents and 592 students (40.7%) answered correctly. Considering the perceived threat of AIDS, the results indicated that in response to the item "unprotected sex put the adolescents at risk of sexual transmitted diseases" 416 (45.8%) female students and 321 (60.5%) male students answered totally opposite, indicating significant difference between the two genders (P=0.00). Conclusion: It is suggested to provide students with more information through mass media and discussions between students, teachers and parents. Training should increase the youth sensitivity to AIDS, as well as promoting sexual relationships until marriage or healthy and safe sex.

How to Continue: The poetry of HIV/AIDS four decades on

How to ContinueThe poetry of HIV/AIDS four decades on Sam Huber (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Still of a balloon release from Jim Hubbard's 1989 Elegy in the Streets, a film that captured the growing political mobilization around the AIDS crisis. [End Page 212] John ashbery's "how to continue" (1992) is the most moving elegy I know for the HIV/AIDS epidemic's early losses. It's also the most moving tribute I know to the solidarity engendered by those losses, though Ashbery is an unlikelier witness in this regard. Our late patron poet of idiosyncrasy—recognizable by his digressions and reversals, who once wrote of "fence-sitting / Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal"—was roused by AIDS into the clarity of a group perspective. "How to Continue" eschews [End Page 213] documentary details for the neater tools of parable. Once upon a time, the poem tells us, there was an island with a "shop / selling trinkets to tourists." On that island a community flourished, a refuge for its inhabitants and a curiosity to outsiders: And it was always a party therealways different but very niceNew friends to give you adviceor fall in love with you which is niceand each grew so perfectly from the otherit was a marvel of poetryand irony Like the past half-century of gay life, "How to Continue" is cleaved by a trauma, with AIDS marking off a clear before and after. In the 1970s, gay liberation had unleashed new forms of political and sexual experience, promising communal pride and promiscuity without consequence—"always a party," but also "a marvel." Like the urban enclaves of that decade, Ashbery's nest of intimacies is porous ("always different") but coherent ("very nice"). The poem's island is more vibrant and satisfying than its residents might have ever dared wish for: "everybody was happy to have discovered / what they discovered." Until one day, without warning, the party sours. The former revelers, now "sleepers / in heavy attitudes," hang around their old haunts like zombies. The tourists leave, abandoning the islanders to their new condition. A "gale" descends and announces, "it is time to take all of you away." Oddly, the natural disaster seems both to break up the scene and to arrive after its end has already been set in motion. Cause and effect are murky. Whatever its source, the disruption gives rise to a new kind of beleaguered fellow feeling: And when it became time to gothey none of them would leave without the otherfor they said we are all one here [End Page 214] and if one of us goes the other will not goand the wind whispered it to the starsthe people all got up to goand looked back on love AIDS is never mentioned in the poem, but what other referent might there be for a melancholic gay man in 1992? By then, the epidemic had torn through communities, enveloping every thought, dream, and desire in its terrible context. Governmental inaction, blinkered public health initiatives, a rabidly homophobic and racist news media, and a scientific establishment stalled by lack of funding and researchers' competing egos allowed the virus to spread practically unabated for the better part of a decade. By the time Ashbery's poem was published, AIDS had laid waste, in the eyes of many, to entire ways of living. If the governing vibe of the 1970s had been celebratory and assertive, much gay writing in the epidemic's early years was riven by ambivalence. "Now we think / as we fuck / This nut / might kill us," the poet Essex Hemphill proclaims in Marlon Riggs's 1989 film Tongues Untied. Hemphill's lines bridge two competing impulses—we might call them introspection and activism—among artists of that era. The existential threat of AIDS drove many queer people inward, forcing them to confront their own mortality, the strain of caring for sick lovers and friends, and the persistence of shame in the wake of ostensible liberation. Currents of self-implication tugged at writers who wondered if the plague bore some cosmic referendum on their...

Case Histories—An Introduction

Case Histories—An Introduction Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz (bio) plagues, as everyone knows, lead to the erection of barriers— cordons sanitaires and quarantines that separate the sick from the well with the intention of enhancing both the letter and spirit of security. Less often considered is the measure of confidence lent to new voices of authority in time of plague. Public concern about the dangers of AIDS and the social impact of this unanticipated epidemic have, for example, prompted the media to ask historians about plagues of the past. Most often the question asked is quite general: "Are there precedents for the AIDS epidemic?" And most often historians shape their answers to meet the limitations of their own professional knowledge. We learn that outbreaks of bubonic plague in Europe and England from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries occurred in the context of constrained economic as well as scientific resources, and that religious belief shaped the responses of those in authority as well as popular sentiment. And historians of the nineteenth century explain that when cholera swept from the East to the West, an environment in which population density generated public sensitivity to social disorders paved the way for new concepts of disease causation and transmission. But not surprisingly, the question of whether there were "precursors" to AIDS remains unanswered, and the notion that natural history or human social history generates precedents revealing predictable patterns seems at best inadequate. One fundamental and striking novelty of the late twentieth century is the expectation of near-perfect protection from contagious disease. [End Page 373] The papers that follow approach the history of past diseases from different perspectives, but the authors—two historians and a scientist—share the view that there is much to be learned about the order of human societies and values from popular and medical responses to epidemic diseases of the distant—and not so distant—past. Paul Slack, Baruch S. Blumberg, and Allan M. Brandt also indicate that the impact of epidemic disease has been affected by human actions, sometimes by interventions that are deliberate as in the effect of quarantine, but also in instances where the course of epidemic disease is altered as a consequence of less direct intention, as in reaction to altered nutritional status. These interactions of man and microorganism are not, of course, interactions that have patiently awaited recent developments in the biomedical human sciences, nor have observations and explanations of the complex interplay of man and disease waited for contemporary historical research. The papers in this section associate the varied history of human responses to the threats of dangerous disease with more general social and moral values. Despite the distance of the bubonic plague or cholera in time and feelings, the historian's skill in restructuring what Slack calls "the interpretive system" that provided peoples of the past with the emotional and intellectual apparatus for giving meaning to experience shows how understanding and confidence were constructed in the absence of scientific knowledge. Is there in the historian's reconstruction of dread disease an implied analogy to the current threat of AIDS in the context of its fatal course, resistant to known therapies? The answer is, most firmly, no. The personal and public uncertainties and accommodations that surrounded much contagious disease even half a century ago seem intolerable today in the context of preventive and therapeutic achievements. If the AIDS epidemic has made us conscious of the limitations of current social and scientific controls of contagion, it is perhaps inevitable, but certainly misleading, to draw simple lessons about ecologic and moral imbalance from the unanticipated eruption of a new and lethal disease. [End Page 374] Through these carefully researched accounts we are exposed not only to a modest understanding of the interaction of man and microbe in history but also to the contemporary historian's caution not to distort the impact of the explanatory system that fit into the world of Daniel Defoe with the implication that seventeenth-century Englishmen made sense of fearsome events much as we do today. The ordinary vices that tempt us to make simple sense of history are, not surprisingly, embedded in our culture. They offer the same temptations...

We Are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar

Reviewed by: We Are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar Karen Coats Dunbar, Helene We Are Lost and Found. Sourcebooks Fire, 2019 [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4926-8104-5 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4926-8105-2 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Michael is coming of age as a gay high school junior in New York City in 1983; it’s an exciting time wherein he can dance away his anxiety and meet a cute boy at a club, but friends of friends are dying of a mysterious disease that seems to be targeting gay men, and acts of violence against gay people are escalating. Michael haunts the edges of gay life with his best friends, James and Becky, who are Michael’s key sources of information about the growing threat of AIDS, James through experiences with dying friends that have made him opt for celibacy and Becky through her boyfriend’s mother, who is a nurse. Despite some minor anachronisms in the dialogue and in Michael’s understanding of how the virus is transmitted, Dunbar paints a broad and accurate portrait of the pain of the times through a series of emotional snapshots of a melancholy boy who longs for love, fears for himself and his brother Connor, who is also gay, and spends time with friends who are no happier. Fortunately, a new boyfriend for Connor represents the promise of a sex-positive gay relationship that might make the pain worth it. The rhetorical technique is more a chronology of vignettes than a plotted narrative as Michael slowly works through his feelings about who he wants to be and what he’s willing to risk to get there; readers looking to understand the history that Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing (BCCB 9/13) alludes to and Bausum’s Viral (BCCB 6/19) describes will find support here. Two afterwords by AIDS activists are included. [End Page 16] Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Evaluation of Virucidal Activity of Reused Gluteraldehyde Solutions

Background : Heat sensitive medical devices are decontaminated between patients in 2% alkaline gluteraldehyde (GTA) baths. Baths are often reused for 14 days. Many busy endoscopy or surgery units also disinfect such instruments with contact times less than the recommended by the manufacturer. Aim of the work : is to evaluate the virucidal activity of alkaline glutaraldehyde (GTA) against both RNA and DNA virus models at different contact periods regarding reusing durations as well as to assess its concentration, protein contents and the solution pH. Methodology : We collected daily samples of disinfectant from a manual bath at a local hospital over the 14-days of the reuse cycle. Control samples were also collected from a similar bath of glutaraldehyde but did not receive any instruments. The virucidal activity of alkaline gluteraldehyde was evaluated after 5, 15 and 20 minutes contact time, using Rift Valley Fever virus (RVFv), Herpes simplex virus type I (HSV- I), Adenovirus- 40 (Adv- 40 ), and Poilovirus type 3 (Poliov-3). The criterion of efficacy was a minimum of a 3-log 10 -unit reduction in the infectivity titers of the virus tested. Solution concentration, protein contents and pH were estimated for each sample. Results : Shorter exposure time of 5 and 15 minutes were critical and not efficient when pH and concentration decrease and protein load increase. An exposure time of 20 minutes improve the efficiency of GTA regarding (HSV-1) and (RVFv), however showed failure to eradicate polioviruses on day 10 (2.55 log reduction) and adenovirus on day 12 (2.74 log reduction) of the reuse cycle. An inverse relation between protein accumulation and gluteraldehyde concentration were observed. These finding emphasize the importance to monitor the disinfectant especially with increasing the threat of AIDS, hepatitis viruses and the resurgence of tuberculosis.

Diminishing Perceived Threat of AIDS and Increasing Sexual Risks of HIV Among Men Who Have Sex with Men, 1997-2015.

Community-wide awareness that antiretroviral therapies (ART) provides protection against HIV has the potential to increase perceived safety and thereby increase condomless anal sex among men who have sex with men (MSM). Furthermore, reductions in condom use can increase exposure to sexually transmitted infections, which in turn can reduce the protective effects of ART on HIV transmission. The current study extends previous community-based behavioral surveillance research on beliefs regarding use of ART for HIV prevention and sexual practices among MSM. Anonymous cross-sectional community surveys were collected from 1831 men at the same gay pride event in Atlanta, GA four times over nearly two decades; 1997, 2005-2006 (the 2006 survey over-sampled African-Americans to diversify the study), and 2015. Results indicate clear and consistent trends of increasing beliefs that HIV treatments reduce HIV transmission risks, reflecting the dissemination of HIV prevention research findings. Changes in treatment beliefs coincide with increased rates of condomless anal intercourse. Increased beliefs that treatments prevent HIV and increased condomless anal sex were observed for both HIV positive men and men who had not tested HIV positive. Results illustrate the emergence of an era where ART is the focus of HIV prevention and community-held beliefs and behaviors regarding definitions of risk create a new and potentially problematic environment for HIV transmission.

Reconsidering gendered sexualities in a generalized AIDS epidemic.

Using the threat of a severe AIDS epidemic in a collection of rural villages in South Africa, we illustrate how men and women reconsider gendered sexualities through conversations and interactions in everyday life. We draw from data collected by local ethnographers and focus on the processes through which men and women collectively respond to the threat posed by AIDS to relationships, families, and communities. Whereas previous research has shown that individuals often reaffirm hegemonic norms about gender and sexuality in response to disruptions to heteronormative gender relations, we find that the threat of AIDS provokes reconsideration of gendered sexualities at the community level. That is, our data demonstrate how men and women-through the interactions and exchanges that make up their daily lives-debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in a context where the threat of a fatal disease transmitted through sex looms large. We argue that ethnographic data are particularly useful for capturing communal responses to events that threaten heteronormative gender relations and reflect on how our findings inform theories of gender relations and processes.

Transitions from injecting to non-injecting drug use: Potential protection against HCV infection

Transitions from injecting to non-injecting drug use have been reported from many different areas, particularly in areas with large human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemics. The extent to which such transitions actually protect against HIV and HCV has not been determined. A cross-sectional survey with HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) testing was conducted with 322 former injectors (persons who had injected illicit drugs but permanently transitioned to non-injecting use) and 801 current injectors recruited in New York City between 2007 and 2012. There were no differences in HIV prevalence, while HCV prevalence was significantly lower among former injectors compared to current injectors. Years injecting functioned as a mediating variable linking former injector status to lower HCV prevalence. Transitions have continued well beyond the reduction in the threat of AIDS to injectors in the city. New interventions to support transitions to non-injecting drug use should be developed and supported by both drug treatment and syringe exchange programs.

Only your calamity: the beginnings of activism by and for people with AIDS.

The invention of AIDS activism came soon after the AIDS epidemic emerged in gay communities in the United States in the early 1980s. AIDS activism by and for people with AIDS, distinct from gay activism responding to the threat of AIDS on the behalf of the whole community, started as a way of resisting the phenomenon of social death. Social death, in which people are considered "as good as dead" and denied roles in community life, posed a unique threat to people with AIDS. An organized political response to AIDS began among gay men with AIDS in San Francisco, California, and New York, New York, formalized in a foundational document later called the Denver Principles. The ideas and language of these first people with AIDS influenced later AIDS activism movements. They also help to illustrate the importance of considering an epidemic from the point of view of people with the disease.

Repetition of Educational AIDS Advertising Affects Attitudes

In educational AIDS campaigns, initiators often use advertisements to warn about the threat of AIDS. The present Internet study (N = 283) tested the assumption of an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of educational AIDS advertisements in a magazine and the perceived threat of AIDS among different groups (i.e., homosexual men and heterosexual men and women). This expectation was primarily based on signaling theory, which assumes that recipients use repetition frequency as a cue for judgments about the message. Results provided support for the expected inverted U-curve.

Revisiting youthful sexuality: continuities and changes over two decades

In this short article we revisit “Deconstructing virginity” published in Sex and Relationship Therapy in 2000. The article was based on data from two largely qualitative studies of young people's sexuality: the Women Risk and AIDS project and subsequent Men, Risk and AIDS project, which were funded in the late-1980s in the light of the threat of HIV and AIDS. They constituted the first UK-based major empirical investigations of young people's heterosexual understandings and practices. Here we place that article in its own time and in the current context of research, practice and culture in relation to young people and sexuality. We comment briefly on how key ideas in “Deconstructing virginity” and these early studies have been developed in subsequent research, considering critical biographical moments as a way of exploring the relationship between the individual and the social and narratives of loss and gain as a medium for negotiating conflict and inequality.

Reflections on 25 Years of HIV and AIDS Research among Drug Abusers

Booth: Since early in the HIV epidemic, street outreach workers, often indigenous to the target population, have served both to recruit drug injectors for interventions and to conduct interventions. The typically unstructured nature of outreach interventions present challenges in determining the nature of services actually delivered. It is recommended that both qualitative and quantitative methods be utilized to monitor intervention service delivery. Des Jarlais: The threat of AIDS has led to profound behavioral changes among drug users. These changes need to be seen primarily not as responses to public health interventions, but in terms of the competencies of drug users themselves. A Drug User Competency Model of HIV Prevention would include: 1. Competency in understanding HIV transmission, 2. Competency in reducing HIV risk behavior, and 3. The competency of altruism. Friedman: Twenty years of work on HIV among drug users highlight that we need to incorporate large-scale social dynamics in research and interventions, understand drug users' sexual behavior and networks, and view drug users as multifaceted human beings, not just “walking addictions.” Crucially, drug users can be highly competent at many things, so non-users can learn from their ideas and their practices. Drug users can be partners and sometimes leaders, not just “disabled addicts.”

Parasitology as a Teaching Tool: Isolation of Apicomplexan Cysts from Store-bought Meat

Our goal was to design a bench experiment tailored to the environment of advanced high school biology, college freshman biology, and nonmajor labs. To accomplish this goal, we developed a scientific protocol for isolation of apicomplexan cysts from store-bought meat by adapting existing protocols (Cornelissen et al., 1981 ; Blewett et al., 1983 ; Dubey, 1992 , 1998 ; Omata et al., 1997 ; Garcia et al., 2006 ). The majority of buffers used were common chemicals found in many introductory biology laboratories, and the protocol is simple enough for a freshman to use. What we found to be most challenging was modifying the experiment to fit time constraints imposed by a typical high school schedule. This experiment takes ∼3 h. We found that the lab could be split up into 4 d for high school and 2 d for college. The teacher should make some initial preparations (i.e., making buffers and solutions) to shorten the lab period. We suggest that students split up into at least five groups of six students each. The students should be encouraged to compare and share their results. We recommend that the students spend time researching T. gondii statistics on the CDC website (www.cdc.gov) and reading newspapers to identify related topics, such as food recalls as a result of tainted product. Specifically, we suggest creating a quiz to test their knowledge of food safety and administering it before and after the exercise. We would also suggest including a follow-up discussion section investigating student response to this assignment. For example, how has completing this laboratory exercise affected their opinions about food, science, and laboratory experiments? We have listed several very useful websites in Materials and Methods. These sites are extremely helpful in providing pictures for identification purposes and background information on the parasites themselves. In addition to T. gondii, numerous other organisms (i.e., multiple types of nematodes and tapeworms) can be observed by sampling the bottom of the meat slurry instead of the supernatant. Although we had multiple years of experience at the lab bench, we found that we were surprised by the abundance and diversity of organisms in meat. It provoked us to ask the question: “Just who is eating who?” Although many of these pathogens are species specific and thus not a health threat to human (i.e., N. caninum), some of the organisms, such as T. gondii, are human pathogens. We realized that it reinvigorated our interest in the topic, and we were fascinated by the images in the microscope. Some of us could not eat meat for a week after doing the experiment. This realization validated for us the idea that science at the bench as opposed to simple book learning is essential for biology and nonmajors students alike. It drives home the point that well-prepared foods (washing and cooking) are a cornerstone of food safety. Carrying out this experiment familiarizes students with the microscope and more advanced isolation techniques such as the use of Percoll. It introduces some concepts about parasitology and food safety. It can be incorporated into a lesson plan covering infectious agents or health. It meets Indiana secondary school standards for advanced life sciences (standard 2: health, safety, and microbiology of food), and human anatomy and physiology (standard 10: immune mechanisms). Completion of this exercise also meets national educational standards for secondary school in the topics science as inquiry, interdependence of organisms, personal and community health, and science as a human endeavor (National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment, 1996 ). Upon completion of this exercise, the following positive outcomes are expected for students: 1) gain confidence about ability to carry out labwork and stimulate curiosity about pursuing other science classes, 2) obtain insight about health and safety of food and provide students the chance to critically evaluate articles in the newspaper regarding food recalls, and 3) change student behavior in terms of food choice, food preparation behavior, or both. In sum, the ultimate outcome of this exercise is for students to apply the procedure to investigate a real and meaningful problem and, as a result, to describe organisms found in the meat supply, the hazards they pose, and procedures for avoiding the hazard. Because there is a compelling repulsion factor, there is a strong possibility that students would also change their behavior (either food choices or food preparation behavior). For teachers, it represents an innovative teaching strategy that provides a relatively inexpensive laboratory experience with direct student involvement that meets several national education standards.

Social networks and HIV/AIDS risk perceptions

Understanding the determinants of individuals' perceptions of their risk of becoming infected with HIV and their perceptions of acceptable strategies of prevention is an essential step toward curtailing the spread of this disease. We focus in this article on learning and decision-making about AIDS in the context of high uncertainty about the disease and appropriate behavioral responses. We argue that social interactions are important for both. Using longitudinal survey data from rural Kenya and Malawi, we test this hypothesis. We investigate whether social interactions--and especially the extent to which social network partners perceive themselves to be at risk--exert causal influences on respondents' risk perceptions and on one approach to prevention, spousal communication about the threat of AIDS to the couple and their children. The study explicitly allows for the possibility that important characteristics, such as unobserved preferences or community characteristics, determine not only the outcomes of interest but also the size and composition of networks. The most important empirical result is that social networks have significant and substantial effects on risk perceptions and the adoption of new behaviors even after we control for unobserved factors.

Explaining the Increase in Condom Use Among South African Young Females

Since 1998 South Africa has experienced stability in HIV prevalence among its 15 to 19 year olds, and to a lesser extent among its 20 to 24 year olds. While a few studies point to behavioural change, mainly an increase in condom use, none has established the reasons. This article explores the influence of various information sources about AIDS upon the use of condoms among rural and urban South African young females, using the South Africa Demographic Health Survey of 1998 (1998 SADHS), while controlling for various socioeconomic and cultural parameters. The results show that condom use among urban residents was positively correlated with mass media exposure, television as a source of information about AIDS, and the number of mass media sources from which the respondent received information about AIDS. Condom use among rural residents was associated with the number of sources of information about AIDS, exposure to mass media, and the language and education of the respondent. Among urban residents condom use was almost twice as high as among rural residents. The results from the article indicate that three elements influenced the increase in condom use among females: the threat of AIDS, mass media, and receptiveness to condom use. The receptiveness was culturally dependent.

New York City Injection Drug Users’ Memories of Syringe-Sharing Patterns and Changes During the Peak of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

In this oral history, 23 injection drug users (IDUs) were interviewed about the mid-1970s to mid-1980s when they could not legally purchase or possess syringes, and the threat of AIDS began to loom large. Several themes emerged, including: abrupt changes in syringe-sharing patterns; the effects of illnesses or deaths of others on their understanding of AIDS; and, racial/ethnic differences in responses to the threat of AIDS. Settings, such as "shooting galleries," helped HIV spread rapidly in the earliest stages of the city's AIDS epidemic. HIV entered the drug scene in the mid-1970s, just when IDUs were shifting from sharing homemade "works" (consisting of steel needles and syringes devised from rubber baby pacifiers and similar sources) among many IDUs to mass produced and distributed plastic, disposable needle and syringe sets. IDUs remember when they first became aware of AIDS and began to adjust their behaviors and social assumptions.

Baseball Annies, Jack Johnson, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis: How Groupies Influenced the Lengthy Ban on Blacks in Organized Baseball

Baseball Annies have long been a presence in the shadows of organized baseball. For much of baseball history, however, the consensus among sportswriters, players, and the front office was that one did not publicize this aspect of the game's culture. After all, these escapades took place away from the diamond, far from the daily stories unfolding on the field of play. Then along came Jim Bouton, pitcher and aspiring writer, who blew the lid off the subject. As Bouton recounts in his tell-all memoir of 1970, Ball Four, a questionnaire circulated by the Seattle Pilots' publicity department among the club's players asked, What's the most difficult thing about playing major-league baseball? And one player replied, Explaining to your wife why she needs a penicillin shot for your kidney infection. The quip refers to the sexually transmitted diseases, from gonorrhea and syphilis to herpes simplex, that pass between Baseball Annies and ballplayers; it also reveals the cavalier attitude of many womanizing ballplayers. (Not so funny was the threat of AIDS, which emerged a few years later.) Baseball Annies affect the lives of ballplayers in other ways too. Because such women are more likely to tolerate all sorts of poor treatment by the heroes they pursue, they blur the usual boundaries and protocols of behavior between a ballplayer and other women in his life. The level of complaints for statutory rape and date rape that are filed against athletes is higher than that of the general population. According to Phyllis Goldfarb, a professor of law, domestic violence is the leading cause of arrest among professional athletes. Goldfarb believes that the culture of sports sends the message that women exist primarily as rewards for athletic achievement. Consequently, a celebrity athlete may simply be taught by the culture that he is superior to his wife, that she can ask nothing of him that he doesn't want to give, that if she persists in doing so, she deserves mistreatment, and moreover, is expendable, as there are countless women out there for him. (1) We can argue that the effects of these behaviors, while unfortunate, are usually limited to the participants and their families. America, we like to say, is a free country and if grown men and women choose to behave so, that is a personal choice. (We see this attitude in the film Bull Durham, through Annie Savoy's counsel to the promiscuous Millie when the latter tries to apologize for arriving late for the ballgame: You were not lured into the clubhouse.... Take responsibility for your actions.) (2) Comments in the works of Roger Kahn, however, suggested to this writer that Baseball Annies may have had a more profound effect on organized baseball than previously thought. Kahn has written that while Jackie Robinson was in Florida for spring training in 1946 with the Montreal Royals, an armed sheriff ordered Robinson off the field, saying, Down here ... we don't have nigras mixing with Not marrying with Not playing ball with whites. (3) Because of such attitudes Kahn felt that white female fans and Baseball Annies may have contributed to Major League Baseball's longtime ban on black players. This paper examines that surmise. For the purposes of this paper I include both white Baseball Annies and white women who were black players' fans, girlfriends, and wives. While these categories include women of very different motivations and values, historically all such liaisons were viewed as scandalous and even, at times, illegal. EYEING BALLPLAYERS It helps to recall that the excesses of Baseball Annies did not emanate from the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Women were eyeing ballplayers from the get-go of organized baseball. In the year that the Cincinnati Reds became the first fully professional ball club, women of questionable repute were advertising themselves at the ballpark, according to this 1869 report in the Cincinnati Commercial: Known to the sporting world as 'Maude, the pet blond' . …

Can the lunatics actually take over the asylum?: Reconfiguring subjectivity and neo-liberal governance in contemporary British drug treatment policy

Health crises have historically served as moments for the transformation of the role of the liberal state. At various points in the history of the 20th century, whether it was panic over venereal disease or tuberculosis, the state has—taken the role of setting public health policies that define, regulate and govern the practices of its citizens. In the 1980s, the threat of AIDS brought about one such reconfiguration. It forced a significant re-evaluation of the state’s policies and practices surrounding injection drug use and its proven correlation to the transmission of blood-borne disease. This paper will assess how the onset of AIDS as a public health emergency in the UK led to a re-evaluation of how the state, under Prime Minister Thatcher, defined the practice of drug use and how drug users were then redefined within those parameters. Through participant observation, interviews and an examination of government documents, I demonstrate how this particular reconfiguration illuminates new technologies of governance that not only attempt to regulate the practices of drug users, but also how those very technologies set the contemporary conditions for drug users to demand a participatory role in service provision and state policy formation.

Social Networks, HIV/AIDS and Risk Perceptions

Understanding the determinants of individuals' perceptions of their risk of becoming infected with HIV and their perceptions of acceptable strategies of prevention is an essential step towards curtailing the spread of this disease. We focus in this paper on learning and decision-making about AIDS in the context of high uncertainty about the disease and appropriate behavioral responses, and we argue that social interaction is an important determinant of risk perceptions and the acceptability of behavioral change. Using longitudinal survey data from rural Kenya and Malawi, we test this hypothesis. We investigate whether social interactions' and especially the extent to which social network partners perceive themselves to be at risk exert causal influences on respondents risk perceptions and on one approach to prevention, spousal communication about the threat of AIDS to the couple and their children. The study explicitly allows for the possibility that important characteristics, such as unobserved preferences or community characteristics, determine not only the outcomes of interest but also the size and composition of networks. The most important empirical result is that social networks have significant and substantial effects on risk perception and the adoption of new behaviors even after controlling for unobserved factors.

Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about HIV/AIDS in Sana’a, Yemen

Although HIV prevalence is low in the Republic of Yemen, existing conditions could lead to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. Interviewers helped 1033 residents aged 14-49 years from randomly chosen households to complete a survey of knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about HIV/AIDS. General awareness was good, although there were many misconceptions about transmission modes, stigmas and discrimination against HIV positive persons. Knowledge was significantly determined by schooling, residence and sex. Although they recognized the global threat of AIDS, participants underestimated its threat to the Republic of Yemen. Television was the commonest source of information. Fostering public awareness is recommended to facilitate the development of intervention programmes, fight stigmas and ensure delivery of care to those affected.