When AIDS Began: San Francisco and the Making of an Epidemic

As the AIDS crisis reaches new heights globally with no cure in the immediate future, the time is ripe to step back and examine the roots of this epidemic. InWhen AIDS Began, Michelle Cochrane constructs the making of the disease and expels many of the misconceptions that surround it. By examining the early outbreaks in San Francisco, she unfolds the "creation" of this disease in one geographic location and then traces how and why major claims about the transmission of HIV were made, extrapolated and then disseminated to the rest of the world - all important factors in understanding. Through her fascinating analysis and research, Cochrane dispels the myths of AIDS by interviewing patients, public health officials, workers and gaining access to medical charts and documents from the San Francisco Public Health Department. She comes to question some of the orthodoxies of AIDS: mainly saying it's a "gay" disease spread by sexual contact. She boldly suggests that in the tracking of the diseasesexual transmission is more often assumed rather than empirically documented. Instead, she suggests that IV drug use and socio-economic status may have played a much greater than acknowledged role among the risk factors for those who were infected. When AIDS Beganis an original and controversial addition to the ongoing dialogue on the disease. Clearly pushing boundaries, this is an important history of an epidemic that continues to plague the globe.

Michelle Cochrane is a Visiting Scholar and Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also held teaching appointments at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles