Private Acts, Social Consequences: AIDS and the Politics of Public Health.

Bayer, Ronald. Private Acts, Social Consequences: AIDS and the Politics of Public Health.

The author takes the view that the consequences of AIDS transmission are a legitimate and essential concern of the state and the community. From within a social, legal, historical, and political context, he explores why coercive government measures such as mandatory testing, broadscale isolation or quarantine, antisodomy laws, and the barring of children with the HIV virus from classrooms cannot ultimately stop AIDS. Authoritarian policies such as these work to antagonize and alienate those whose cooperation is...