HIV/AIDS epidemic largely ignored in U.S., says speaker

America’s response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been to keep it out of sight and out of mind, according to journalist and author John-Manuel Andriote.

That’s because the disease has been associated with groups that have been treated as marginal by society, he says.

Andriote made his remarks during a lecture at the Student Union on Sept. 10. The event was sponsored by UConn’s Rainbow Center.

He noted that there has been no national AIDS strategy since the HIV/AIDS epidemic was first reported in 1981. “Politically, the epidemic has not been given priority in this country for 27 years,” he said.

“When you have a disease that is perceived as afflicting people who are unpopular, who are marginalized because of race, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status, or when you have a disease that can easily be seen as afflicting the ‘other’ and not ‘me’ personally, it is very easy to relegate it to the margins of your own awareness,” he said.

Andriote, who came out as a gay man in 1981 when he was in his early 20s, has reported on HIV/AIDS since earning his master’s degree at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1986.

His award-winning book, Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America, was published in 1999.

Andriote said HIV was viewed from the beginning as “a disease affecting the proverbial ‘other’ – the other who is feared, dreaded, the other who is relegated to the margins of awareness.

“We don’t want to confront the reality that the bottom line is we’re all human and vulnerable to a deadly microbe that is transmitted through acts of intimacy and pleasure,” he said. “What an incredibly frightening thing to think about.”

When HIV was first reported, he said, gay men tried to distance themselves from the disease. They sorted themselves into categories, saying, for example, ‘I don’t have multiple sex partners, I’m not at risk.’

“They found many reasons why they didn’t need to be concerned,” he added.