Although billions of dollars are being spent to find a cure for AIDS, and many drugs are now available for its treatment, millions of people worldwide continue to suffer and die from this disease. Unraveling AIDS is a timely and well-researched book that addresses a wide range of issues regarding the AIDS pandemic. Perhaps most important, the authors explore alternative therapies that appear to be safer, more effective, and less costly than the current generation of AIDS pharmaceuticals.
We see it all the time: organizations strive to persuade the public to change beliefs or behavior through expensive, expansive media campaigns. Designers painstakingly craft clear, resonant, and culturally sensitive messaging that will motivate people to buy a product, support a cause, vote for a candidate, or take active steps to improve their health. But once these campaigns leave the controlled environments of focus groups, advertising agencies, and stakeholder meetings to circulate, the public interprets and distorts the campaigns in ways their designers never intended or dreamed. In Best Laid Plans, Terence E. McDonnell explains why these attempts at mass persuasion often fail so badly. McDonnell argues that these well-designed campaigns are undergoing “cultural entropy”: the process through which the intended meanings and uses of cultural objects fracture into alternative meanings, new practices, failed interactions, and blatant disregard. Using AIDS media campaigns in Accra, Ghana, as its central case study, the book walks readers through best-practice, evidence-based media campaigns that fall totally flat. Female condoms are turned into bracelets, AIDS posters become home decorations, red ribbons fade into pink under the sun—to name a few failures. These damaging cultural misfires are not random. Rather, McDonnell makes the case that these disruptions are patterned, widespread, and inevitable—indicative of a broader process of cultural entropy.
Examines conspiracy theories surrounding HIV and AIDS, focusing on two main widely believed falsehoods--that America manufactured AIDS to be a biological weapon and the belief that HIV is harmless and the true cause of AIDS are antiretroviral drugs.
Now an award-winning documentary feature film The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.
Assignments that engage students in inquiry topics of their own choosing contribute to motivation and thus to learning. Very often the topics chosen (particularly by high school students) are considered controversial by school administration, parents, community organizations, and others. This practical book discusses the processes, actions, and policies needed to support and encourage high school students in that type of inquiry. Building trusting relationships over time with administration and the school community will be stressed as a way to build a community of true inquiry in your school and library. Classroom teachers and high school librarians will value the advice and scaffolding techniques presented that will enable their school and high school library to become a safe place for student inquiry into issues of their own choosing— controversial or not. The author draws on her 30-plus years as a high school librarian, deeply concerned with the intellectual freedom of the researchers in her library media center and with offering help and reassurance to those trying to implement school library programs that allow all voices to be heard. Grades 9-12.
A comprehensive view of health issues currently plaguing Africa, with an emphasis on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being highlights the specific health problems facing Africa today, most particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book presents not only various healthcrises, but also the larger historical and contemporary contexts within which they must be understood and managed. Chapters offering analysis of specific illness case studies, and the effects of globalization and underdevelopmenton health, provide an overarching context in which HIV/AIDS and other health-related concerns can be understood. The contributions on the HIV/AIDS pandemic grapple with the complications of national and international policies, thesociological effects of the pandemic, and policy options for the future. HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being thus provides a comprehensive view of health issues currently plaguing the continent and the many differentways that scholars are interpreting the health outlook in Africa. Contributors: Obijiofor Aginam, Yacouba Banhoro, Richard Beilock, Charity Chenga, Mandi Chikombero, Kaley Creswell, Freek Cronjé, Frank N. F. Dadzie, Gabriel B. Fosu, Stephen Obeng-Manu Gyimah, Kathryn H. Jacobsen, W. Bediako Lamousé-Smith, William N. Mkanta, Gerald M. Mumma, Kalala Ngalamulume, Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Cecilia S. Obeng, Iruka N. Okeke, Akpen Philip, Baffour K. Takyi, Melissa K. Van Dyke, Sophie Wertheimer, Ellen A. S. Whitney Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas atAustin. Matthew M. Heaton is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
Today's political climate overflows with admonitions to "get involved," as if entering the political fray is the great cure-all for almost any conceivable social problem. This advice may be a recipe for disaster. Staying out of politics is sometimes wiser. Pursuing non-political options may even be best given the inherent difficulties of the political pathway. In this volume, Robert Weissberg offers a corrective to a view that has evolved into a civic religion. A nearly missionary flavor infuses the very notion of political activism, and it is especially prevalent among those on the ideological spectrum's left, though hardly unknown among conservatives. Getting involved, it is said, will do everything from improve our education to make us healthier (or, for conservatives, reduce immorality). This benefit is grossly oversold, especially given our gridlock-mired political system, one that greatly limits what can be accomplished. Even the most worthy causes face stiff opposition, and for every winner, there are countless losers. Academics in particular have promoted politics as the great remedy for social and economic ills, but this prescription rests on flawed, often myopic research that may have a hidden (liberal statist) ideological agenda. We cannot safely assume that those befuddled by economic tasks will eventually become adroit political players. Furthermore, research often demonstrates zero about political progress that results from political activism, though it persuasively asserts that such gains have been made. Scholars also forget that most goals that can be pursued in the civic realm can also be sought through private channels. Millions of parents, for example, have secured better educations for their children simply by abandoning public education, not battling "the system." This volume constitutes both a powerful challenge to the dogma that political activism is an unqualified good, and a strong case that in many instances following the private route may be the superior option. It will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, and students of public policy. "The Limits of Civic Activism constitutes both a powerful challenge to the dogma that political activism is an unqualified good, and a strong case that in many instances following the private route may be the superior option. The book will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, and students of public policy." -SirReadaLot.org Robert Weissberg is professor of political science emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana. He is author of Polling, Policy and Public Opinion, The Politics of Empowerment, Political Tolerance, and Political Learning, Political Choice and Democratic Citizenship.
Proteomics Approaches to Unravel Virus - Vertebrate Host Interactions, Volume 109 in the Advances in Virus Research series, highlights state-of-the art mass spectrometry techniques to elucidate the tight interplay of vertebrate viruses and their host cells. The volume includes chapters on Spatio-temporal resolution of host protein complexes during virus entry, Proteomic approaches to investigate gammaherpesvirus biology and associated tumorigenesis, Applications of Mass Spectrometry Imaging in Virus Research, Mapping surfaceome dynamics during viral infection, Characterization of proteolytic events in virus-host interactions, Dynamic protein network modulation upon viral infection, and much more. - Discusses the latest methodological breakthroughs in mass spectrometry-based proteomics - Reviews how technology has advanced our knowledge on virus-host interactions - Provides future perspectives on proteomics research in virology
Exploring Biology in the Laboratory: Core Concepts is a comprehensive manual appropriate for introductory biology lab courses. This edition is designed for courses populated by nonmajors or for majors courses where abbreviated coverage is desired. Based on the two-semester version of Exploring Biology in the Laboratory, 3e, this Core Concepts edition features a streamlined set of clearly written activities with abbreviated coverage of the biodiversity of life. These exercises emphasize the unity of all living things and the evolutionary forces that have resulted in, and continue to act on, the diversity that we see around us today.
