Showing papers in "Daedalus in 1987"

Foundations and ruling class elites.

Abstract: In Margaret Atwood's powerful novel The Handmaid's Tale,1 the heroine Offred, a member of a new class of "two legged wombs" in a dystopian society, often thinks to herself, "Context is all." Offred reminds us of an important truth: at each moment of our lives our every thought, value, and act?from the most mundane to the most lofty?takes its meaning and purpose from the wider political and social reality that constitutes and conditions us. In her newly reduced circumstances, Offred comes to see that matters beyond one's immediate purview make a great deal of difference with respect to living a more or less free and fully human life. But her realization comes too late. Unlike Offred, feminists have long recognized as imperative the task of seeking out, defining, and criticizing the complex reality that governs the ways we think, the values we hold, and the relationships we share, especially with regard to gender. If context is all, then feminism in its various guises is committed to uncovering what is all around us and to revealing the power relations that constitute the creatures we become. "The personal is the political" is the credo of this critical practice.

The AIDS pandemic: an internationalist approach to disease control.

Abstract: Since the first cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syn drome (AIDS) were reported in the United States in 1981, the AIDS epidemic has commanded increasing public attention and concern. According to the United States Center for Disease Control, 31,982 cases of AIDS had been reported by March 1987.1 An overwhelming number of these cases were among homosexual and bisexual men, intravenous drug abusers, and those exposed to contaminated blood products. Female victims, less than 10 percent of the total, were predominantly heterosexual partners of men from these high-risk groups. Given the long latency period between initial infection and the onset of clinical disease, these AIDS cases represent only the tip of the iceberg of subclinical infections. Probably more than one million Americans have been exposed to and infected by the AIDS virus, and most of the 270,000 AIDS victims projected for 1991 are already infected.2 In just six years, AIDS has emerged as one of the gravest public health threats of this century. In the absence of a vaccine or more effective antiviral drugs, information and education campaigns to alter high-risk sexual and drug abuse behavior are the only measures currently available to control the disease, in addition to the screening of blood products. As these disease control efforts are pushed forward, the related issues of human rights and legal and ethical standards will become increasingly complex and contentious. Public fears, often bordering on mass hysteria and fueled by intense media coverage, have already generated pressures for compulsory testing,