Because AIDS is a disease that is spread through socially determined practices, the shape that it takes in any given setting is as much a product of social and cultural structures as it is the result of biological factors. Just as a specific set of cultural and social circumstances shapes the spread of AIDS, it also conditions the ways in which particular societies respond to it--the ways in which they define or interpret the disease, the reactions they have in relation to those affected by it, the steps they take to prevent it, and so on.
The AIDS epidemic has now become a pandemic, as a worldwide community faces its dire challenge. International epidemiologists have attempted to find the biological and social causes of world-wide AIDS. Major patterns of HIV transmission will be examined from a sociological perspective, with particular reference to the social conditions in Brazil. The underlying social forces surrounding the spread of AIDS in Brazil will be contrasted with those of the United States. It will be apparent that the U.S. has been, and will continue to be, a world leader against the HIV virus, in large measure because of economic clout and world-influence.
In Brazil, where gay or homosexual society is less organized than in the United States and Western Europe, the fact that AIDS in these regions affected mostly gay men aroused ambiguous emotions that did little to attract either serious or responsible journalism. Brazil's press was waiting for the first AIDS case to appear, and it arrived in 1983. During that year, a veritable upsurge of press interest focused on what was then objectively referred to as the "gay cancer," or gay plague."
In the U.S., gay groups had already started to mobilize against the disease, by establishing community awareness and counseling centers in large cities such as New York and San Francisco. Despite large-scale government indifference during the Reagan administration, local g...