AIDS, power, and reason

The AIDS epidemic at once challenges the biological, social, and political fabric of American life. Individual liberty and communal welfare are always in a state of tension in public health policy. AIDS-specific fears, merged with common distrust for scientific authority, have led to appeals to coercive state power. Others counter with equally illusory promises of voluntarism and education. In fashioning new policies we must preserve a social capacity for reasoned analysis and public discourse.