"The Nature of a New Threat" / 434

Steven Epstein is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California in San Diego (http://weber.ucsd.edu/~sepstein). His academic areas of interest include the sociology of medicine, biomedicine, health, and illness; the sociology of science and scientific knowledge; the sociology of sexuality; gay and lesbian studies; social movements, and sociological theory. Epstein posts his current research interests off his website, included here:

My current research examines the politics of identity and difference in biomedical research in the United States. More specifically, I am investigating the origins and consequences of recent U.S. policy changes designed to improve the health care of women, members of racial and ethnic minority groups, children, the elderly, and others by incorporating them in greater numbers within medical research populations. The study focuses on a range of new federal requirements for the inclusion of diverse groups in NIH-funded clinical studies and in trials of new drugs submitted to the FDA for approval. On one hand, these policy changes are designed to promote equity between social groups. On the other hand, they are a response to concerns about human difference: Can findings from studies conducted on one group safely be extrapolated to another group?

I am interested in how the biomedical research establishment responds to external challenges from identity-based social movements and their representatives. More abstractly, I seek to understand how biomedicine becomes an arena in which ideas about bodies and differences are defined and contested.

The goals of the study are: (1) to identify the confluence of pressures through which these new "inclusionary" policies came about and replaced the prior, de facto policy of research that emphasized white men; (2) to assess the actual impact of the new policies to date in diversifying medical research; and (3) to analyze the costs, benefits, and ethical and practical consequences of biomedical "diversity" and "equity" for doctors, patients, medical researchers, drug developers, and the society at large.

The study has implications for a number of broad theoretical debates, including those surrounding multiculturalism and identity politics, as well as those focused on understanding the biological or social character of gender and racial differences.

In "The Nature of a New Threat," Epstein shares the social history surrounding the discovery of AIDS, and what was originally considered a "gay disease." Read this summary of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (1996): http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/books/sebimpure.htm. This misunderstanding is still in our social mileau: We still associate AIDS with people who are gay. In his essay Epstein points out that this is largely due to the "politics of lifestyle"; that is, we connect gay people to AIDS because society felt people with different sexual identities should be punished. Epstein points out that there is more to this, though, including access to health care, associated life activities like drug use, etc.

What is "retrovirology?" Read this piece, as well as the critical readings, to find out.