Shattered Dreams? is an oral history of how physicians and nurses in South Africa struggled to ride the tiger of the world's most catastrophic AIDS epidemic. Based on interviews-not only from the great urban centers of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban-but from provincial centers and rural villages, this book captures the experience of health care workers as they confronted indifference from colleagues, opposition from superiors, unexpected resistance from the country's political...

Today, AIDS has been indelibly etched in our consciousness. Yet it was less than twenty years ago that doctors confronted a sudden avalanche of strange, inexplicable, seemingly untreatable conditions that signaled the arrival of a devastating new disease. Bewildered, unprepared, and pushed to the limit of their diagnostic abilities, a select group of courageous physicians nevertheless persevered. This unique collective memoir tells their story. Based on interviews with nearly eighty doctor...

In the era of the Internet and Oprah, in which formerly taboo information is readily available or freely confided, secrecy and privacy have in many ways given way to an onslaught of confession. Yet for those who are HIV positive, decisions about disclosure of their diagnosis force them to confront intimate, fundamental, and rarely discussed questions about truth, lies, sex, and trust.Drawing from interviews with over seventy gay men and women, intravenous drug users, sex w...

Since public health seeks to protect the health of populations, it inevitably confronts a range of ethical challenges having to do primarily with the friction between individual freedoms and what might be perceived as governmental paternalism. This volume brings together twenty-five articles by leading thinkers in the field, writing on topics that concern both classic and novel problems. They open up new terrain in each area, including tobacco and drug control, infectious disease, environm...

I Several years ago, when the Carter administration announced that it would support congressional action to end the public fund ing of abortions, the President was asked at a press conference whether he thought that such a policy was unfair; he responded, "Life is unfair." His remarks provoked a storm of controversy. For other than those who, for principled reasons, opposed abor tion on any grounds, it seemed that the President's comments were cruel, violating what was thought to be an Ame...

This outstanding new book shows why communitarian thought has had such a profound influence on contemporary American public policy, from strengthening our neighborhoods to fighting AIDS and educating our children. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, founder of the Communitarian Network and author of the best-selling books The Spirit of Community and The New Golden Rule, this comprehensive collection contains essays written by the nation's most respected thinkers. See why politician...

This open access book offers the first in-depth study of the history and current debates surrounding electronic cigarettes comparing the UK, US and Australia. Since their introduction, e-cigarettes have been the subject of much public, media and regulatory attention, with discussion centring on whether these devices encourage or discourage smoking. This study delves into the history of policymaking and institutions in three countries which have taken different approaches to the regulation ...

To "fight for your rights," or anyone else's, is not just to debate principles but to haggle over budgets.The simple insight that all legally enforceable rights cost money reminds us that freedom is not violated by a government that taxes and spends, but requires it—and requires a citizenry vigilant about how money is allocated. Drawing from these practical, commonsense notions, The Cost of Rights provides a useful corrective to the all-or-nothing feel of ...

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.Boldly calling i...

Facing a crisis unlike that of any other generation, young people are caught between the discourses of consumerism and a powerful crime-control-complex, and are viewed increasingly as commodities or are subjected to the dictates of an ever expanding criminal justice system. Drawing upon critical analyses, biography, and social theory, Disposable Youth explores the current conditions of young people now face within an emerging culture of privatization, insecurity, and commodificati...

The hunt for the origin of the AIDS virus began over twenty years ago. It was a journey that went around the world and involved painstaking research to unravel how, when, and where the virus first infected humans. Dorothy H. Crawford traces the story back to the remote rain forests of Africa - home to the primates that carry the ancestral virus - and reveals how HIV-1 first jumped from chimpanzees to humans in rural south east Cameroon. Examining how this happened, and how it then travelle...

The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?”What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think.Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship.Rules have replaced leadership ...