Impure science : AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge
Epstein shows the extent to which AIDS research has been a social and political phenomenon and how the AIDS movement has transformed biomedical research practices through its capacity to garner credibility by novel strategies
Print Book, English, ©1996
University of California Press, Berkeley, ©1996
xiii, 466 pages ; 24 cm.
9780520202337, 9780520214453, 0520202333, 0520214455
34564867
Introduction: Controversy, credibility, and the public character of AIDS research
Part 1. The politics of causation. The nature of a new threat ; HIV and the consolidation of certainty ; Reopening the causation controversy ; The debate that wouldn't die
Part 2. The politics of treatment. Points of departure ; "Drugs into bodies" ; The critique of pure science ; Dilemmas and divisions in science and politics ; Clinical trials and tribulations
Conclusion: Credible knowledge hierarchies of expertise, and the politics of participation in biomedicine. Introduction: Controversy, credibility, and the public character of AIDS research. The crisis of credibility and the rise of the AIDS movement ; Analyzing AIDS controversies ; Conceptualizing AIDS: some intellectual debts
Part one: The politics of causation. The nature of a new threat ; The discovery of a "gay disease" (1981-1982) ; Lifestyle vs. virus (1982-1983) ; The triumph of retrovirology (1982-1984) ; HIV and the consolidation of certainty ; The construction of scientific proof (1984-1986) ; HIV as "obligatory passage point" ; Reopening the causation controversy ; From deafening silence to the pages of Science (1987-1988) ; Consolidation and refinement (1989-1991) ; The debate that wouldn't die ; The controversy reignites (1991-1992) ; The dynamics of closure: whither the controversy? (1997-1995) ; Causation and credibility
Part two: The politics of treatment. Points of departure ; Targeting a retrovirus (1984-1986) ; Clinical trials take center stage (1986-1987) ; "Drugs into bodies" ; Gaining access (1987-1988) ; A knowledge-empowered movement ; The critique of pure science ; AZT and the politics of interpretation (1989-1990) ; Activism and the manufacture of knowledge (1989-1991) ; Dilemmas and divisions in science and politics ; Combination therapy and the "surrogate markers" debate (1989-1992) ; Inside and outside the system ; Clinical trials and tribulations ; The search for new directions (1992-1993) ; Living with uncertainty (1993-1995)
Conclusion: Credible knowledge, hierarchies of expertise, and the politics of participation in biomedicine. Science and the struggle for credibility ; The transformation of AIDS research ; The legacy of AIDS activism
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