[HIV-AIDS medicine, antiretroviral treatment, adherence: a discussion about self-care]

We propose a reflection on the role of biomedical and clinical action in the organization, promotion and legitimating of discourses and practices of self-care and control in the experience of HIV-AIDS disease. We analyze the conditions and requirements of the so-called "adherence" to antiretroviral treatment, which is of central importance in medical and health actions. Since medical intervention tends to associate viral progression to patient adherence, the "meeting of requirements" implies not only the certainty about medical indication but the very possibility of salvation. Through corporeal monitoring and the control of the interactions and practices of those affected, this medicalizing process directs their behavior, sets forms of discipline and imposes a responsible way to care for themselves. Thus, the power of biomedical institution is not only its ability to define a physical condition through diagnosis but also helps to establish the parameters of illness experience, reconfiguring the ways in which subjects understand and relate to themselves and others, producing new forms of identity, belongings and social relations.