How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Hearing AIDS, 1981-1996

Abstract

For the ones who aren't here… AIDS does not exist apart from the practices that conceptualize it, represent it, and respond to it. We know AIDS only in and through those practices. This assertion does not contest the existence of viruses, antibodies, infections, or transmission routes. Least of all does it contest the reality of illness, suffering, and death. What it does contest is the notion that there is an underlying reality of AIDS, on which are constructed the representations, or the culture, or the politics of AIDS. If we recognize that AIDS exists only in and through these constructions, then the hope is that we can also recognize the imperative to know them, analyze them, and wrest control of them. Denver Delegation 1983 266 6.4The Denver Principles 267 6.5Being Sworn in for Testimony 269 6.6Peter Allen AIDS Walk 1986 271 6.7Ten Percent Revue 290 6.8The Flirtations Original Sextet 292 6.9Blossom Figure iii AcknowledgmentsThere's an African proverb that says "it takes a village to raise a child. It is remarkable that a conservative publication like Reader's Digest labeled AIDS the "plague that knows no boundaries" in 1987. The accompanying article details the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout Africa, where the demographics of the epidemic differ markedly from the US. There, HIV/AIDS has been largely a heterosexual health issue whereas in the US, HIV/AIDS has been constructed predominantly as a health problem for gay men. Since the start of the epidemic, HIV/AIDS has been defined by boundaries, along a shifting border between straight/gay, white/black, affluent/poor, and first world/third world. The first term in each pair represents the "general population," once thought to be safe from AIDS; the second, "risk groups," whose lifestyles or circumstances were seen (often by the leaders of the "general population") as particularly vulnerable to-if not deserving of-infection, sickness, and death. If HIV/AIDS really is an epidemic without borders, how do we make sense of it?How do we understand and discuss the biomedical, political, legal, and cultural impact of this global pandemic? Part of the answer to these questions can be found in the discursive structures used to describe and represent AIDS. These include medical, scientific, and 1 Discussions of the meaning of "syndrome" in discourses about the epidemic include Jeffrey Week's "Post-Modern AIDS" in Boffin and Gupta's Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology (Rivers Oram Press, 1990). Weeks writes, "AIDS is a pre-eminently modern phenomenon, the 'disease' of the last part of the twentieth century. But it is also a remarkably historicized phenomenon, shadowed by histories that frame and shape responses to it and burden people with HIV and AIDS with a freight from the past they should not have to bear" (133 Crimp's full assertion is that "AIDS does not exist apart from the practices that conceptualize it, represent it, and respond to it. We know AIDS only in and through those practices. This assertion does not contest the existence of viruses, a...

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Hearing Aids for Middle-Aged and Older Adults in China: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…With a conservative estimate of the life span at 2.52 years (the threshold for being cost-effective), the ICER for the hearing aid intervention is 217,673 yuan/QALY ($33,587/QALY). Considering that the life span of most hearing aids is 5 to 7 years (31), the ICER is generally within the threshold of cost-effectiveness. Therefore, hearing aid use is a cost-effective strategy and is urgently needed for people with hearing impairment in the Chinese contexts.…”

“…In general, the average life span of hearing aids is between 3 and 7 years (31), so hearing aid interventions can be considered cost-effective at a high probability. With a conservative estimate of 2.52 years of hearing aid use (the threshold for being cost-effective), the ICER for hearing aid use is 217,673 yuan/QALY ($33,587/QALY).…”

“Something Inside So Strong”: The Flirtations and the Queer Politics of A Cappella

“…For more on Callen's life and activism, see Matthew J. Jones “How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Hearing AIDS, 1981–1996” PhD dissertation (The University of Virginia, ) and Martin Duberman, Hold Tight Gently: Essex Hemphill, Michael Callen, and the Battleground of AIDS . (The New Press, 2014)…”