The impact of AIDS cannot be adequately measured by epidemiology alone. As the editors of this volume argue, AIDS must be understood as a 'disease of society', which is challenging and changing society profoundly. Numerous books on AIDS have looked at the ways in which our social institutions, norms and values have determined how the disease has been dealt with, but this book, first published in 1991, examines the ways in which AIDS is, in turn, changing our social institutions, norms and values. It explores the impact of AIDS on the arts and popular entertainment, on our concept of family, on government and legal institutions and on the health services, and the ways in which AIDS is forcing society to come to terms with longstanding tensions between community values and individual rights.

The impact of AIDS cannot be adequately measured by epidemiology alone. As the editors of this volume argue, AIDS must be understood as a 'disease of society', which is challenging and changing society profoundly. Numerous books on AIDS have looked at the ways in which our social institutions, norms and values have determined how the disease has been dealt with, but this book, first published in 1991, examines the ways in which AIDS is, in turn, changing our social institutions, norms and values. It explores the impact of AIDS on the arts and popular entertainment, on our concept of family, on government and legal institutions and on the health services, and the ways in which AIDS is forcing society to come to terms with longstanding tensions between community values and individual rights.

<div><i>Dangerous Diagnostics</i> is a powerful study of the pervasiveness of diagnostic testing and the potential it offers institutions to classify, categorize, and ultimately control individuals. Nelkin and Tancredi explore the ethical, social, and legal implications of cutting-edge technologies that can lead to new forms of discrimination in the name of standardized, objective measurements. They caution against the creation of an underclass deemed unemployable, untrainable, or uninsurable by such diagnostic tests.</div>

"Workers at Risk" is a powerful and moving documentary of workers routinely exposed to toxic chemicals. Products and services we all depend on--glass bottles, computers, processed foods and fresh flowers, dry cleaning, medicines, even sculpture and silkscreened toys--are produced by workers in constant contact with more than 63,000 commercial chemicals. For many of them, the risk of death is a way of life.
More than seventy of them speak here of their jobs, their health, and the difficult choices they face in coming to grips with the responsibilities, risks, fears, and satisfactions of their work. Some struggle for information and acknowledgment of their health risks; others struggle to put out of their minds the dangers they know too well. Through extensive interviews, the authors have captured in these voices that double bind of the chemical worker: "If I had known that it would be that lethal, that it could give me or one of my children cancer, I would have refused to work. But it's a matter of survival and we just don't consider all these things. Meanwhile, we've got to make money to survive."