Activism and political rhetoric surrounding HIV-AIDS
In our discussions about the history of HIV-AIDS in Los Angeles, we’ve touched on the significance of political protest and activism within that period– when we posted images related to AIDS in LA on Slack, several of the pictures showed demonstrators demanding justice for AIDS patients and greater communal action against the disease.
I wanted to focus this roundup on the forces they were fighting against– in what systemic ways, and by whom, was AIDS ignored and stigmatized in American culture? In the 1980s, mainstream politicians refused to take the AIDS crisis seriously, most famously President Ronald Reagan’s administration. Was the government’s response inadequate, or reflective of bias, as protestors suggested? What events, statements, or policies were the protestors likely demonstrating against, and what were the major organizations leading HIV-AIDS advocacy at the time? We've also discussed the stereotypes and stigmas employed in popular discussion of HIV-AIDS, and Sontag covers this topic in her book extensively. How do politicians and government officials discuss HIV-AIDS today, and how does that compare to political/mainstream discourse about the disease in 80s and 90s?
On another note, if you’d rather write about this, we’ve discussed inequity in medical care and hospital access within Los Angeles and I’m wondering how this inequality would affect the progression of HIV-AIDS in Los Angeles, or in America in general. How is HIV-AIDS healthcare stratified or different depending on a patient’s wealth, and what are ways to equalize access to treatment?
The healthcare inequalities that we have discussed in class would definitely serve as barriers for people trying to be diagnosed or treated for HIV-AIDS. The most susceptible to the aforementioned inequalities are minorities and other groups that experience similar disadvantages. I think that if the HIV-AIDS outbreak happened in 2019 there would be greater access to diagnosis and treatment due to the affordable care act increasing the amount of Americans covered by insurance. Conversely in the 1980's stereotypes and stigmas surrounding HIV-AIDS and the LGBT+ community made finding a diagnosis and treatment plan extremely difficult. Towards the beginning of the outbreak wealth and status had a greater influence on the patients treatment; however, now that antiretroviral therapy is insured under most plans it does not have as great of an impact. The best way to equalize access to treatment is to raise awareness and host clinics that offer free or discounted testing.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading up on some articles, when the AIDS breakout occurred, countries around the world did not know how to address the instability of AIDS. Apparently, if health activists had not argued that the disease was harmful to society, it would not have the funds that backs up research today. PEPFAR, which is a plan enacted by Bush in 2003, supports AIDS globally and its prevention in 50 countries. In Africa, young adults make up most of the population, making today’s generation a vital role to the hope to ending AIDS. However, this group has little representation and input on AIDS national policies and funding. The reason AIDS has been highly political is because of its mode of transmission and the stigma surround it. In history, at some points, politics has corrected injustices for gay rights globally; however, politics has also blocked policy developments on AIDS.
ReplyDeleteThis blogpost made me think of Trump's State of the Union last week where he talked about HIV/AIDS, committing to "eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years" and then the follow-up op-ed I read (which I'll link below) addressing AIDS healthcare inequity between states. What stuck with me most from the federal response to the "AIDS epidemic" and the op-ed was the reality that even with the extremely advanced medical tools and strategies to combat HIV/AIDS, the geographical associations with HIV &AIDS linger in the way a lot of our conversations are framed today. As the article mentions, the HIV epicenter in the US is now the South - a direct contrast to when the discussion, and subsequent panic, about HIV AIDs was centered on the coastal, elitist cities. I think it's so interesting how unconsciously (one could also argue it is very much consciously) we "attach" levels of worry/panic with diseases based on where they are concentrated. I wonder how this applies to other diseases, and even things like the gun violence "epidemic'. I sort of went on a tangent...
ReplyDeleteHere's the op-ed : https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/opinion/hiv-aids-south.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
And here's more background on Trump's plan to end HIV by 2030 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/trump-hiv-aids-plan.html
In response to the second set of questions, I think that, currently, healthcare is extremely unequal in terms of wealth and race, which can lead to a greater growth of aids in those who are poor. For instance, homeless people don't have a way of accessing healthcare, which can lead to a greater amount of cases of AIDS/HIV in the homeless population. I think in order to ensure that no group of people have a greater chance of dying of AIDS/HIV, we need to offer free healthcare so that everyone can get treatment for their diseases.
ReplyDeleteAffordable health care is hard to come by for several Americans across the country and of course in Los Angeles. There are racial and socioeconomic barriers that ostracize people from obtaining the proper healthcare they need. For those who are either 1) unable to pay for healthcare or 2) unaware of what HIV-AIDs is (and how to get tested etc.) are already at a disadvantage to take care of the problem and live a healthier life. In a perfect world, there would be free healthcare and I agree with Jono in that free healthcare would definitely solve the issue; however, this idea may appear to be unfeasible leaving people with very few options in terms of how to take care of themselves and their families. I think the first step is to spread the word around diseases, common illnesses, and medication. Then from there, like Kevin said, clinics that offer either free or affordable treatment can assist people in the short term. The long term agenda for affordable and/or free healthcare may be a little more complex to tackle, but I think it can be executed in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI did some reading on the Regan administration's ignorance of the AIDS crisis and it turns out that he didn't even publicly mention AIDS until 1985, after 15,000 people had already died. A significant source of Regan's support even came from the newly identified religious right political-action group founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell who argued "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." Additionally Regan's director communications even said that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men." Clearly, Regan and his administration not only contributed to the stigmatization of AIDS and those who had it, but they also furthered their suffering by supporting anti-gay organizations and creating false associations. Looking at different forms of protest and response to this ignorance, I think it would be interesting to explore the arts, and how they helped give a voice to those who suffered. Rent for example was extremely impactful. Johnathon Larson, a sufferer of AIDS himself wrote the iconic rock musical in 1996 Rent after many of his friends had died from the disease. He documents a year in the life of a group of friends that struggle with the physical and psychological effects of AIDS, and in so doing he dispels many of the stereotypes having to do with AIDS and HIV. I would be interested in talking about this in our round up tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001, at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS), 189 national governments, including the United States, adopted the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. The document "commits governments to improve responses to their domestic AIDS epidemics and sets targets for AIDS-related financing, policy, and programming." This is an example of an important political milestone in the response to AIDS, as it officially, outwardly recognized it as a global phenomenon and crisis. The document includes recommendations for prevention, care, treatment, and alleviating AIDS' social and economic impact on communities on both local and federal levels. I'd be interested in learning more about how (if at all) member states (specifically the U.S.) are actually upholding their commitment to the document, whose overarching goal includes ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. It's ambitious. According to the plan, by 2020 the U.S. will increase investments to close the resource gap in AIDS studies by investing at least US$ 26 billion a year in the AIDS response. Again, I'm not sure if we're actually following through on this.
ReplyDeleteHere's the summary of the plan: http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2016/june/20160608_PS_HLM_PoliticalDeclaration
I remember when I was younger that I was taught that Raegan Hadn't even said the word AIDS in public until 1985 which was very shocking to me at the time because thousands of people had already died. There were also scandals of Raegan's press secretary joked about AIDS in 1983. Raegan delivered his first "major speech" about AIDS in 1987 after years of neglecting HIV-AIDS. I definitely think the government's actions at the time were inadequite and definitely reflective of bias as seeing one of the most "American" people, Raegan, wouldn't even address the problem until it had gotten out of hand. I believe that if HIV-AIDS wasn't so stigmatized as seen as a disease for gay people that research would have been done quickly and without motivation by protests. As far as healthcare inequality there were many protests about the price of AZT, the first FDA approved anti-HIV drug, because many people who were affected by HIV-AIDS were not able to buy the drugs needed to help them.
ReplyDeleteWhen AIDS was first starting to be recognized, many politicians and people in power thought it would be easy to just pin it as diseases that couldn’t affect them - and rather, only homosexual men, etc… Because of this and because, at the time, there wasn’t a lot of evidence that they would take to prove them otherwise, they took it to mean that they didn’t need to put a lot of attention towards it. Once more high profile people started to get it (or those who weren’t homosexual men, as they had thought), they naturally started to think that it was the time to, at least somewhat, address it. The rhetoric surrounding HIV-AIDS today is significantly different as we’ve learned with things like SB 239 being passed and with how some politicians are more willing to decriminalize it, but there’s of course still work to be done.
ReplyDeleteI was reading an interesting article about the link between politics and HIV in South Africa and the country’s shift from zero-tolerance policies to harm-reduction ones where they prioritize public health over criminalization have led to the country now being an operator of one of the world’s largest drug treatment initiatives and one that rapidly changed life expectancy and newborn infection rates. The article notes that greater synergy between the government and the scientific community has also played a large role in these improvements, whereas beforehand, the President had publicly questioned the linkage of HIV and AIDS which led to more public questioning and an overall climate that led to fewer people getting treated/more health consequences. I think that this goes to show that politics and their scope can play a large role in how our country views wider health issues and that politicians need to use their platform to help promote public health and change. Here’s the article: https://impactethics.ca/2016/07/25/the-politics-of-hiv/
As we’ve touched on in class, it’s commonly acknowledged that HIV/AIDS was ignored in the way that it was because it affected the gay community in a primarily Republican-led period in American history. As demonstrated by the mantra “silence is death,” protestors seemed to mainly be fighting for official recognition that something awful and terrifying was happening to them and their communities.
ReplyDeleteCorrespondingly, in current times, I don’t think we focus on or discuss AIDS nearly as much as when it was rampant and usually fatal in the 1980s and 1990s because the shock and the mystique of it has worn off. But it’s also possible that I’m just not aware of when and how it’s talked about because I have the privilege to not have to worry about the disease in the same way that people of other demographics might have to.
In other news, I got a CNN alert today: “London patient might be second to be cured of HIV,” and I’d love to talk about the implications and significance of this in class.
I got that too!
DeleteI second that.
As AIDS was first breaking headlines in the early 1980s, it was primarily affecting gay men. Even before this epidemic, gay men had always been targets of homophobic hate crimes, so this outbreak was just used as another excuse to continue this marginalization. Despite millions dying from the virus, HIV/AIDS was ignored for the majority of the 1980s during the Reagan administration. As a period that was dominated by Republican political influence, I don't think it's a coincidence that Reagan never even acknowledged it until 1985 when over half a million Americans had already died.
ReplyDeleteNow, as medical research has advanced, I think much of the hysteria surrounding the disease has worn off. However, many health policies (like we witnessed in that video in class) are still outdated and continue to marginalize and vilify those who have AIDS/HIV.
Finally, as Isabel noted above, I also got that CNN notification on my phone, and it would be great if we could allocate some time tomorrow to look into it.
The AIDS epidemic was a time characterized by news headlines that read “Alert over ‘gay plague’” and “‘Gay plague’ may lead to blood ban on homosexuals.” I think what I’ve always found so bizarre about the HIV/AIDS epidemic is that people who identified as straight naturally assumed they wouldn’t or couldn’t contract it. With it being a disease that primarily affected gay men at the time, it gave homophobic officials (or anyone, for that matter) a reason to not pay attention to it, and to simply sweep it under the rug. It wasn’t until Ryan White, a young straight cis white male, was diagnosed with HIV that people really started to notice and acknowledge the disease.
ReplyDeleteThis is only slightly off topic but learning about the AIDS epidemic and the fact that it took a young white boy to contract it for the rest of the country to begin to understand the disease and make sense of it made me think of the opioid epidemic. I was reading an article in the Economist and it was talking about how the one silver lining of the opioid epidemic is that America is treating it as a public health crisis and not as one of criminal justice. During the peak of the crack wave in the 80s and 90s, users of crack were primarily black and authorities subsequently wrote it off as another issue that only affected minority groups and therefore, not their problem. Until, however, this problem became one of both blacks and whites, and then people started to get involved. The same thing happened with the AIDS epidemic, as with countless other global matters. I think it seems easy for a lot of people to stay out of something because it simply does not affect them or anyone like them so they don’t see the necessity to help, don’t want to help, or don’t feel like they have an important part to play– and I wonder why that is.
I think these political protests were not only fighting for AIDs research, but I think they were fighting against the ideologies at the time. Although the acronym “GRID” may have not been used anymore, the connotations were still there. AIDs was seen as a “gay cancer” or “gay plague” (wiki) whether people directly called it that or not. I think many people were quick to use AIDs as a way to push their anti-gay agenda, and I think many of the protests were to humanize the issue and bring it back to reality and science.
ReplyDeleteThe last question reminded me of the lyric Cole mentioned earlier from Kanye West’s song “Roses” : “You know the best medicine go to people that's paid. If Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS and all the broke motherfuckers passed away; You telling me if my grandma's in the NBA right now she'd be okay?” This lyric directly shows who has access to the highest forms of medicine.