AIDS and Accusation

Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Addressing the question, this is an ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society. Praise for the first edition: “Farmer’s sensitive exploration of the lives and deaths of the people at [the village of] Do Kay give his study a distinctly human face and an emotional edge.... The book is at the same time fiercely personal and coldly objective. The result is both moving and illuminating.”— Science “Farmer renders a richly layered and nuanced ethnographic portrait.”— Harvard Educational Review “This superbly crafted volume is dedicated to explaining and refuting a popular U.S. belief that AIDS came to the United States from Haiti. . . . Farmer has made an outstanding scholarly contribution to the ‘anthropology of suffering,’ the assessment of illness as perceived and experienced by a patient embedded in an interlocking fabric of culture and history.”— Medical Anthropology Quarterly Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Award-winning author and anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer answers with this, the first full-length ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society. First published in 1992, this new edition has been updated and a new preface added.