Posts
An international team led by Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) professors has received a
three-year National Endowment for the Humanities award to study the origins of
HIV/AIDS. Rather than identifying the first HIV case, the project, “An
International Collaboration on the Political, Social, and Cultural History of
the Emergence of HIV/AIDS,” would consider “larger historical, political,
economic, social, and cultural relations and processes” that contributed to
HIV’s emergence. The team would include three HIV researchers (virologists
Preston Marx and François Simon and epidemiologist Ernest Drucker) and six
humanities scholars led by Professor William H. Schneider and Professor Didier
Gondola, chair of the IUPUI history department.
Drucker stated that the project
would place the medical, public health, and biological dimensions of HIV’s
origin in historical context. There was wide scientific agreement that immune
viruses had been present among African chimp and monkey populations for tens of
thousands of years. Fewer than 100 years ago, some of these evolved into
viruses that affected humans. DNA sequencing has identified 12 strains, including
HIV-1 and HIV-2, which have caused most of the epidemic.
The team would explore the social
and cultural consequences of the introduction of western medicine shortly
before the appearance of the HIV epidemic. Study topics included changes in
great ape and monkey hunting; social transformations during colonialization;
and western medical interventions, including immunization campaigns and blood
transfusions, which facilitated virus transmission. Gondola, an expert in the
history of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, would investigate the relationship of
urbanization, migration, and gender on the emergence of AIDS. Project
activities would include fieldwork and research into archival records and
colonial and medical service records in Europe and Africa.
By applying the “critical humanities
approach,” the research team aimed to develop a model that would help medical
science and public health researchers understand disease emergence.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus.
To learn more about The Friends of
AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
