The Invisible People is a revealing and at times shocking look inside the United States's response to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known -- the global AIDS crisis. A true story of politics, bureaucracy, disease, internecine warfare, and negligence, it illustrates that while the pandemic constitutes a profound threat to U.S. economic and security interests, at every turn the United States has failed to act in the face of this pernicious menace. During the past twenty years, more than 65 million people across the globe have become infected with HIV. Already 25 million around the world have died -- more than all of the battle deaths in the twentieth century combined. By decade's end there will be an estimated 25 million AIDS orphans. If trends continue, by 2025, 250 million global HIV-AIDS cases are a distinct possibility. Beyond the ineffable human toll, the pandemic is reshaping the social, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of our world. Eviscerating national economies, creating an entire generation of orphans, and destroying military capacity, the disease is generating pressures that will lead to instability and possibly even state failure and collapse in sub-Saharan Africa. Poised to explode in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, and China, AIDS will have devastating and destabilizing effects of untold proportions that will reverberate throughout the global economy and the international political order. In this gripping account that draws on more than two hundred interviews with key political insiders, policy makers, and thinkers, Greg Behrman chronicles the red tape, colossal blunders, monumental egos, power plays, and human pain and suffering that comprise America's woeful response to the AIDS crisis. Behrman's unprecedented access takes you inside the halls of power from seminal White House meetings to tumultuous turf battles at World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, heated debates in the United Nations, and chilling discoveries at the Centers for Disease Control. Behrman also brings us into the field to meet the people who live in the midst of AIDS devastation in places like a school yard in Namibia, the red-light district in Bombay, and an orphanage in South Africa. Intensely researched and vividly detailed, The Invisible People is a groundbreaking and compellingly readable account of the appalling destruction caused by more than two decades of American abdication in the face of the defining humanitarian catastrophe of our time.

Although overall HIV prevalence in South Asia is low, the widespread stigma attached to HIV and AIDS impedes efforts to reach people most in need of prevention, care, and treatment services. To address this challenge, the 2008 South Asia Region Development Marketplace partnership, led by the World Bank, launched a competitive grants program to support innovative community approaches. 'Tackling HIV-Related Stigma and Discrimination in South Asia' summarizes the monitoring, evaluation, and case study data and documents successful community innovations. Twenty-six community groups in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka received funds. The initiatives involved a broad spectrum, including vulnerable groups as well as people living with HIV, the media, local government authorities, health workers, and religious leaders. The interventions used traditional cultural and media approaches to discuss taboo subjects. The reach of the initiatives was amplifi ed by involving opinion leaders. The strategies engaged marginalized groups to design and lead the interventions and to facilitate contact between groups experiencing stigma and the general public to reduce fears and misconceptions about transmission. Projects that combined economic and stigma reduction interventions helped the marginalized populations to overcome the internalized stigma and become empowered to advocate for their rights. 'Tackling HIV-Related Stigma and Discrimination in South Asia' identifies effective strategies to raise awareness and reports on shifts--albeit slow--of attitudes, norms, and behaviors. Through its recommendations for successful interventions to reduce barriers to effective HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs, the book provides a strong foundation on which to build stigma reduction efforts in the region and world.

Today over 40 million adults and children worldwide are infected with HIV, however knowledge of the disease has increased greatly and the prognosis is now good for those with access to anti-retroviral treatment. For many, HIV is now a long-term chronic condition and with decreased mortality, patient requirements and disease patterns have changed, making it increasingly apparent to health care professionals that the treatment of HIV should include optimum nutrition and healthy lifestyle interventions to help sufferers lead long and healthy lives. In this essential new book an international team of authors under the editorship of Specialist HIV Dietitian Vivian Pribram bring together the latest research to provide the practicing dietitian and nutritionist with a practical guide to the nutritional care of the HIV and AIDS patient. Students and other health care professionals working and studying this area will also find Nutrition and HIV an important and valuable resource.

At the age of twenty-nine, Sizwe Magadla is among the most handsome, well-educated, and richest of the men in his poverty-stricken village. Dr. Hermann Reuter, a son of old South West African stock, wants to show the world that if you provide decent treatment, people will come and get it, no matter their circumstances.

Sizwe and Hermann live at the epicenter of the greatest plague of our times, the African AIDS epidemic. In South Africa alone, nearly 6 million people in a population of 46 million are HIV-positive. Already, Sizwe has watched several neighbors grow ill and die, yet he himself has pushed AIDS to the margins of his life and associates it obliquely with other people's envy, with comeuppance, and with misfortune.

When Hermann Reuter establishes an antiretroviral treatment program in Sizwe's district and Sizwe discovers that close family members have the virus, the antagonism between these two figures from very different worlds -- one afraid that people will turn their backs on medical care, the other fearful of the advent of a world in which respect for traditional ways has been lost and privacy has been obliterated -- mirrors a continent-wide battle against an epidemic that has corrupted souls as much as bodies.

A heartbreaking tale of shame and pride, sex and death, and a continent's battle with its demons, Steinberg's searing account is a tour-de-force of literary journalism.

The Association Of Nurses In AIDS Care (ANAC) Presents The Essential Information Needed By Every Nurse Working With HIV/AIDS Patients In Any Setting. The Text Provides An Educational Framework For HIV/AIDS Clinical Content And Serves Those Preparing For Specialty Certification In HIV/AIDS Training. The Text Covers: A) Infection, Transmission, And Prevention B) Clinical Management Of A Variety Of Patient Types C) Symptomatic Conditions And Symptom Management D) Special Populations E) Psychosocial Concerns For Patients. ANAC's Core Curriculum For HIV/AIDS Nursing, Third Edition Includes The Following New Topics: Updates To The Evidence Basis Underlying The Nursing Care Of Persons With HIV/AIDS. New Issues And Challenges Including The Care For Pediatric Patients And Adults With Giardia, Syphilis And Bipolar Disease. New Text Features Including Case Studies And Quizzes.

HIV/AIDS reverses life expectancy gains, erodes productivity, consumes savings and dilutes growth efforts, threatening the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa.The report is the result of an extensive analytical and consultative process begun in 2006, that engaged more than 1,000 people from over 30 countries and many institutions mostly in Africa, as well as UN agencies, multilateral and bilateral donors, and foundations. The report reaffirms the Bank's commitment to combating HIV/AIDS in Africa, moving from its initial emergency response to the next phase, including the goal to provide at least US $250 million annually and to create an Africa HIV/AIDS Incentive Fund to enhance the evidence base, promote the multisectoral response and provide technical support, analysis and policy advice to countries.

'HIV and AIDS in South Asia: An Economic Development Risk' offers an original perspective on HIV and AIDS as major development issues for the region. Although the impact of HIV and AIDS on economic growth appears to be very small, three risks to development are associated with HIV and AIDS in South Asia: the risk of escalating concentrated epidemics, the economic welfare costs, and the fiscal costs of scaling up treatment. As the authors show, South Asian countries have relatively low estimated national HIV prevalence rates, but prevalence is growing rapidly among vulnerable groups at high risk, such as sex workers and their clients, men having sex with men, and injecting drug users and their partners. The cost benefits of targeted prevention programs are high, and the financing of prevention measures such as comprehensive harm reduction and condom use is a sound economic investment in low-prevalence countries with concentrated epidemics. Interventions that reduce the risks and stigma associated with HIV and AIDS have benefits beyond the cost of lives saved; they improve the welfare of those who are at risk and those who fear contracting HIV. Treatment for AIDS in South Asia is limited at present, with weak health systems contributing to low access to and use of services. The challenges of a comprehensive scaling up of antiretroviral treatment are substantial, underscoring the crucial role of effective prevention today. The authors conclude that the limited ability of many households to pay 'catastrophic' health expenses associated with treatment, as well as the negative consequences associated with poor adherence to treatment, suggest a large and central role for the public sector in the provision of antiretroviral therapy. 'HIV and AIDS in South Asia: An Economic Development Risk' will be of particular value to readers with interests in the areas of economic policy, microfinance, public health, and epidemiology.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a set of symptoms and infections resulting from the damage to the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This condition progressively reduces the effectiveness of the immune system and leaves individuals susceptible to opportunistic infections and tumours. HIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-seminal fluid, and breast milk. This transmission can involve anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated hypodermic needles, exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding, or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids. This book presents important research in the field from around the globe.

Genocide by Denial: How Profiteering from HIV/AIDS Killed Millions traces the carnage of HIV/AIDS from its Ugandan epicentre in the villages of Kasensero, along the shores of Lake Victoria, through sub-Saharan Africa and onto the rest of the world. The author's involvement in the struggle against the virus started in 1989, soon after his return from a long exile in Europe and the Middle East. On arrival he found the disease devastating his country, compelling him to fight the modern-age plague. He became one of the leaders in a protracted fight against the scourge and an advocate for universal access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy. In this book the author exposes the incredible self-indulgence of the pharmaceutical companies and the cold-heartedness of the rich world that turned a blind eye until it was far too late, and then responded too slowly with too little. The book details his challenge to the powerful pharmaceutical companies that insisted on profitable business as usual, ignoring the lives of millions, and his call for more ethical and humanitarian ways of trade, involving crucial life-saving drugs, and a new world order to ensure entitlement of the poor to rapid humanitarian relief.

This book takes its readers on a journey into the very heart of the hunt for viruses - to the key experiments originally performed to prove that these invisibly small particles are the cause of diseases previously blamed on toxins or bacteria and into the latest research. It sheds light on the extraordinary assumptions that underlay much of this research - and on the vaccines that developed from this. The author, an investigative journalist who has researched and produced investigative films for the BBC, American and Australian television, was asked by parents with children severely ill after vaccination, to discover if the medical authorities were hiding anything from them. She agreed, but had no idea how long this search would take. She expected at best to uncover a small degree of contamination. On the ensuing decade-long journey of discovery, she learnt it is not just the added mercury that we have to worry about. She discovered that the top government scientists admit to colleagues that vaccines are contaminated with viruses from chickens, humans and monkeys, with RNA and DNA fragments, with 'cellular degradation products', and possibly 'oncogenes and prions.' They report alarmingly that it is impossible to commercially purify vaccines. They express great concerns, but the public is not told despite the possible consequences for long-term public health. A recent US court decision has linked autism with vaccine contamination. The author cites her sources by name - and gives references and Internet links where they are available. I She reveals evidence that the World Health Organisation has discovered the MMR vaccine is contaminated with chicken leukosis virus, but has decided not totell the public of this, and to continue to make the vaccine with eggs from contaminated chickens. She reports US biowarfare researchers tried to create new agents to destroy our immune systems - and worked on a bacterium to make it a hospital superbug. Did they manage to create HIV? A senior professor told her that the vaccine program was so contaminated that HIV might well have spread though it without any need for military intervention. She set out to find the evidence to resolve this, and to learn how HIV apparently spread so far and fast. She needed to know more about this virus so went to the foundation research widely held today to have found HIV and proved it caused AIDS. She was then rocked to discover that this same research was investigated for scientific fraud for a five year period by powerful US scientific institutions and by Congress, . Why is this not widely known? She found their reports and discovered they found major errors in this research, some so serious that these made it impossible to repeat these experiments and thus to verify them She reveals the evidence unearthed - reproducing key documents so the reader can assess them for themselves. This is explosive material. In the final part of this book the author reports recent research that is revolutionising biology and offering much hope for the future. These new developments shed new light on the relationships between our cells and viruses. They are not necessarily enemies. Readers may find these new developments radically change the ideas they have held about viruses since childhood. This book has over 500 references and includes several documents unearthed under Freedom of Information legislation. It has ascientific glossary and is fully indexed..

This book addresses the comprehensive health care needs of both women and children with HlV infection from a multidisciplinary perspective. The authors represent a wide range of disciplines including medicine, nursing, social work, anthropology, and epidemiology. This text is ide al for all health care practitioners who provide care to women and chi ldren with HlV infection, from physicians, nurses, and midwives to soc ial workers, counselors, and chaplains. Administrators and program pla nners will also find this book to be a valuable resource.

The author is trained in biology, microbiology, medicine and epidemiology in the US. His book is predicated on two main points: the Aids pandemic is so pervasive in Africa that drastic measures are needed; and that those measures must primarily depend on prevention. He discusses such a comprehensive approach and treatment, and stresses that the primary need is political will. The first four chapters deal with the general principles of history and epidemiology; and then focus on the effect of the epidemic in Africa and how to deal with it. Whilst a wealth of technical information is given, the language is accessible for the lay reader.

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 Cronje, Frank N. F. Dadzie, Gabriel B. Fosu, Stephen Obeng-Manu Gyimah, Kathryn H. Jacobsen, W. Bediako Lamouse-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.

'The most complete history of how AIDS treatment activism began - and an appalling look at the government AIDS mismanagement which continues today." -John S. James, editor, "AIDS Treatment News" 'In persuasive detail.Kahn demonstrates [that] the struggle against AIDS requires a continuous fight against vested interests that have little regard for alternative ideas and against egotists who put self-aggrandizement above a worldwide crisis. Arthur Kahn's book presents the history of the clinical struggle and identifies heroes, many of whom have died fighting for all of us. Their efforts must be recognized. Their struggle is not over." -William Regelson, M.D., Professor, College of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University (from the introduction)

Support groups for people with AIDS have proliferated, but there hasn't been a handbook for AIDS group work for the mental health professional, until now. AIDS Trauma and Support Group Therapy by Martha Gabriel is the first book to offer practitioners and students in training the essential practice knowledge and theory about planning, forming and facilitating support groups for people living with AIDS/HIV. Dr. Gabriel, a leading expert and former senior clinical group supervisor at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City, empowers clinicians to effectively harness the enormous resource of support groups for people with AIDS/HIV. By emphasizing the traumatic aspects of AIDS, the book provides a deep understanding of the psychological issues individuals with AIDS bring to the group. Gabriel introduces a new framework for understanding trauma along with rich practice examples from diverse PWA groups. The reader learns how to deal effectively with issues unique to AIDS/HIV clients including social stigma, confidentiality and disclosure, rational suicide and suicidality related to psychiatric disturbance, dementia, and tuberculosis among group members. Dr. Gabriel addresses special considerations in group formation, issues for group therapists in the middle phase, crisis stages, and special termination issues. The impact of multiple deaths on individual members, on the group-as-a-whole and on group facilitators is explored through case narratives and discussion. And Gabriel makes specific treatment suggestions to care for these caregivers - AIDS/HIV group practitioners - who may themselves experience the symptoms of secondary traumatic stress. AIDS Trauma and Support Group Therapy: MutualAid, Empowerment, Connection is essential reading for a wide range of mental health professionals, including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and a diverse group of paraprofessionals working with people with life threatening illness.

WHAT REALLY CAUSES AIDS:
AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The AIDS pandemic is likely to become the greatest catastrophe in human history. Unless a safe, effective vaccine is quickly developed, or the preventive strategies outlined in this book are widely applied, by 2015 one sixth of the world's population will be infected by HIV-1 and some 250 million people will have died from AIDS. Its associated losses by then will be more than those of the Black Death and World War II combined, the equivalent of eight World War Is.1 This pandemic is only one of several ongoing catastrophes involving viruses that encode the selenoenzyme glutathione peroxidase.2 Indeed, the world is experiencing simultaneous pandemics caused by Hepatitis B and C viruses, Coxsackie B virus and HIV-1 and HIV-2. As these viruses replicate, because their genetic codes include a gene that is virtually identical to that of the human enzyme glutathione peroxidase, they rob their hosts of selenium. Paradoxically, however, they diffuse most easily in populations that are very selenium deficient,3 possibly because their members have depressed immune systems. It is no coincidence that such viruses are causing havoc at the beginning of the 21st century. The last 50 years have seen enormous expansions in the use of fossil fuels and deforestation by fire. The resulting pollutants have greatly increased the acidity of global precipitation, reducing selenium's ability to enter the food chain. This situation is being made worse by the widespread use of commercial fertilizers since their sulphates, nitrogen, and phosphorus all depress the uptake of selenium by crops. Deficiencies in this essential trace element are being felt most acutely inareas, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where soil selenium levels are naturally very low. Acid rain is making a bad situation worse, so increasing vulnerability to those viruses that encode glutathione peroxidase. Many populations are also being exposed to a thinning ozone layer, heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium, pesticides, and drug, tobacco, and alcohol abuse, all of which depress the human immune system, increasing vulnerability to viruses, including HIV-1 and HIV-2. In July 2000, physicians and scientists from around the world met in Durban, South Africa for the XIII International AIDS Conference. In a declaration, named after the city, 5,018 of them proclaimed that "HIV is the sole cause of AIDS."4 There are, however, at least seven anomalies that strongly suggest that this conventional wisdom is incorrect and that belief in it is blocking progress in the development of new treatments for AIDS and of novel ways of preventing its spread. To illustrate, despite widespread unprotected promiscuous sexual activity in Senegal, HIV- 1 is diffusing very slowly, if at all, amongst the Senegalese.5 It is very apparent that in Africa, differences in soil selenium levels are greatly influencing who becomes infected with HIV-1 and who does not. Indeed, the recently published Selenium World Atlas used the incidence of HIV-1 as a surrogate measure of soil selenium levels because actual levels are, as yet, poorly established in sub-Saharan Africa. A similar relationship has been documented in the United States6 where there has been an inverse relationship, especially in the Black population, between mortality from AIDS and local soil selenium levels. It is well established that individuals whoare HIV-positive gradually become more and more selenium deficient.7 This decline, which is known to undermine immune functions, is not unique to HIV-infection but is seen in almost all infectious pathogens.8 However, under normal circumstances, where death does not occur, selenium levels rebound soon after recovery. HIV-1, however, can effectively elude the defense mechanisms of the immune system, and can continue to replicate indefinitely, endlessly depressing serum selenium. As a result, the immune system is compromised, allowing infection by other pathogens that continue to deplete the host of selenium, allowing HIV-1 to replicate more easily, further undermining immunity. Therefore, this relationship between selenium and the immune system is one of positive feedback, in which a decline in either of these two variables causes further depression in the other. Termed the "selenium- CD4 T cell tailspin" by the author,9 it is the reason that serum selenium levels are a better predictor of AIDS mortality than CD4 T cell counts. Like other positive feedback systems, such as avalanches and forest fires, it is extremely difficult to control and gains momentum as it progresses. HIV-1, however, encodes the entire selenoenzyme, glutathione peroxidase. As it replicates, therefore, it depletes its host not only of selenium but also of the other three components of this enzyme: namely, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan.10 AIDS, therefore, is a nutritional deficiency illness caused by a virus. Its victims suffer from extreme deficiencies of all four of these nutrients which are responsible for such symptoms as depressed CD4T lymphocyte count, vulnerability to cancers (including Kaposi'ssarcoma), depression, psoriasis, diarrhea, muscle wasting, and dementia. Associated infections cause their own unique symptoms and increased risk of death. HIV-1 alone, therefore, does not cause AIDS. It involves a multiplicity of co-factors, specifically anything that either depletes serum selenium levels or depresses the immune system enough to permit viral replication. Manipulating the "selenium-CD4T cell tailspin" by adding this trace element to fertilizers and food stuffs opens new avenues for both prevention and treatment. This strategy has been shown to work on other viruses that encode glutathione peroxidase, such as Hepatitis B and C and the Coxsackievirus. The logical treatment of AIDS patients involves supplementation with selenium, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan, at least to levels at which deficiency symptoms associated with a lack of

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is the most devastating global public health crisis since the great plagues of the Middle Ages, with more than 14,000 new HIV infections and 8,000 deaths due to AIDS every day. Although successful vaccines have been developed for most common childhood diseases, the development of a vaccine against the AIDS virus is a much greater challenge. More than 20 years after the discovery of the virus, the goal of a licensed and globally accessible vaccine is still several years away. AIDS Vaccine Development reviews the scientific challenges that have impeded the search for an effective AIDS vaccine and discusses current novel research that is accelerating progress. In a series of mini-reviews by the world's leading experts in AIDS vaccine research, the book provides essential reading for everyone interested in the current progress and future direction of AIDS vaccine development.

It has now been twenty years since the Executive Commitee of the World Council of Churches (WCe meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, called upon churches worldwide to urgently address the issue of HIV/AIDS. The call arose out of a consultation on the theme 'HIV/AIDS and the Church as a Healing Community'. This book is written with a view to providing culturally relevant theological reflection on the issue of HIV/AIDS and to act as a resource in the combat of HIV/AIDS particularly in bringing about meaningful behaviour change.

Ann Showalter invites readers along on a roller coaster ride called AIDS. Showalter began her ride the Saturday afternoon her husband Ray said, "I have AIDS." After the first shock, Ray's revelation became a breath of fresh air for the couple. This is their story. "Along the way, Ann lets the reader overhear her own conversations and prayers about matters that are complicated, vexed, painful, and controversial. She invites our company, not necessarily our consent." -John Weborg, Twenty-Fourth Week of Pentecost, in the Foreword

In 1994, the prospect of finding a cure for AIDS represented a dream that scientists and physicians hoped to realize by the new millennium. Despite advances in medicines and treatments, a single cure still remains elusive to this day. What goes on behind the scenes in the world of new drug development is often secretive and deceptive. This mystery reveals the motives of a pharmaceutical company that is on the cusp of launching a revolutionary treatment for AIDS. Patient access to the new drug KLX is hampered by deception, greed and murder. The societal impact of AIDS is poignantly outlined in this story about innocent humans who are affected by the actions of a few executives controlling a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical market. From homeless people to politicians and government bureaucrats, conspiracies are created between unlikely allies. Only a young employee of Linfeld Pharmaceuticals has the courage to fight for the hope of thousands suffering from AIDS.

This title illustrates the impact of HIV/AIDS on electoral processes in South Africa and provides evidence of the influence of the pandemic on the democratic process. It is part of an ongoing Africa-wide study by the Governance and AIDS programme of the institute for democracy in South Africa (IDASA). It does not equate elections with democracy nor does it reduce HIV/AIDS to a vote. Instead it provides empirical evidence of the effect of the biggest challenge facing Africa today and how it may shape the dynamics of our politics. It demonstrates that HIV/AIDS is not just a health crisis, but a pandemic that has implications for political and social processes. The analysis and results presented in this title show that HIV/AIDS may undermine the democratic project in South Africa and Africa by destabilising electoral systems; reducing political party support bases and the ability to compete; decreasing the participation in public policy processes of citizens infected and affected by the pandemic; and potentially undermining the capacity of electoral management bodies (EMB)s to conduct elections effectively.

Half the people in the United States who are diagnosed with HIV are now African American. Through the eyes of those on the front lines of the crisis, journalist Jacob Levenson tells a story of race and public health that spans fifty years and reveals how AIDS has become one of the leading killers of young black men and women. Medical researcher Mindy Fullilove investigates the epidemic's links to crack cocaine, the Bronx fires, and national health policy. Desiree Rushing must reconcile her crack addiction and HIV infection with the fate of her city, family, and the black church. David deShazo, a white AIDS worker in Alabama, fights to prevent the American South from becoming the epidemic's new epicenter. And Mario Cooper, a gay, infected son of the black elite confronts the boundaries of American race politics in Washington, D.C. Seamlessly interweaving personal stories with national policy, Levenson indelibly captures this devastating epidemic and illuminates its potential to expand our understanding of race in America.