A Note on the Integration of AIDS into the Sociology of Human Sexuality

In recent decades throughout the industrialized world, death has come to be associated largely with old age. Declines in infectious diseases resulting from advances in medical technology and improvements in nutrition and sanitation have led to the virtual elimination of widespread epidemics which affect the mortality rates of infants and young adults (Kain 1987). The emergence of AIDS represents an important challenge to this linkage between death and old age, and holds the potential of significantly influencing every institution in modem society. Because it is a fatal disease with no known cure, and the rate of infection has increasedrapidly, a number of public health measures have been suggested as possible means of reducing the spread of AIDS in this country. No small amount of controversy has surrounded some of the suggestions (see for example, Lief 1986; Hunt 1986; Crenshaw 1986; Kaplan, Sager, and Schiavi 1986; Carter 1986; Peck 1986). Despite controversy, a key element of the national response to AIDS has been an emphasis upon education programs about how the disease is transmitted and methods of decreasing the chances of being exposed to the virus associated with AIDS. (Knowledge about AIDS is changing rapidly. For a summary of the history of scientific understanding of the disease through late 1986, see Osborn 1986). Central to any program which focuses upon education is the assumption that knowledge about AIDS will change behavior-it is hoped in the direction of reducing high risk behaviors. It is clear, however, that this relationship is far from simple. AIDS has, at least initially, been associated with high risk groups which are defined as deviant (Albert 1986a). This association has important implications for the effectiveness of education programs and for the types of information which the general population may have about AIDS. It is also a central reason why sociology courses are an excellent context for teaching about AIDS.