Promotional Information

Winner, C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems; Robert K. Merton Award of the American Sociological Association.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS                                      

Introduction: Controversy, Credibility, and the Public Character of AIDS Research

The Crisis of Credibility and the Rise of the AIDS Movement
Analyzing AIDS Controversies
The Plan of the Book
Conceptualizing AIDS: Some Intellectual Debts

PART ONE: THE POLITICS OF
CAUSATION
1. The Nature of a New Threat                       

The Discovery of a "Gay Disease" (1981-1982)
Lifestyle vs. Virus (1982-1983)
The Triumph of Retrovirology (1982-1984)

2. HIV and the Consolidation of Certainty           
The Construction of Scientific Proof (1984-1986)
HIV as "Obligatory Passage Point"

3. Reopening the Causation Controversy             

From Deafening Silence to the Pages of Science (1987-1988)
Consolidation and Refinement (1989-1991)

4. The Debate That Wouldn't Die   
                 
The Controversy Reignites (1991-1992.)
The Dynamics of Closure: Whither the Controversy? (1992-1995)
Causation and Credibility

PART TWO: THE POLITICS OF TREATMENT

5. Points of Departure                             

Targeting a Retrovirus (1984-1986)
Clinical Trials Take Center Stage (1986-1987)

6. "Drugs into Bodies"                             

Gaining Access (1987-1988)
A Knowledge-Empowered Movement

7. The Critique of Pure Science                    

AZT and the Politics of Interpretation (1989-1990)
Activism and the Manufacture of Knowledge (1989-1991)

8. Dilemmas and Divisions in Science and Politics  

Combination Therapy and the "Surrogate Markers" Debate (1989-1992.)
Inside and Outside the System

9. Clinical Trials and Tribulations
The Search for New Directions (199z-1993)
Living with Uncertainty (1993-1995)

Conclusion: Credible Knowledge, Hierarchies of
Expertise, and the Politics of Participation in
Biomedicine                       

Science and the Struggle for Credibility
The Transformation of AIDS Research
The Legacy of AIDS Activism

METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX             
NOTES                              
INDEX

About the Author

Steven Epstein is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. The work on which this book is based won the American Sociological Association's award for best dissertation of the year.

Reviews

"As the AIDS movement is showing, people with diseases can play a profound part in saving themselves . . . A perceptive and useful analysis of this revolution in the democratization of medicine."
*New York Times*

"Amid the dozens of books about AIDS, one stands out—Impure Science. . . . Epstein has documented the fast-moving history of the epidemic's first years in an eloquent, readable narrative. . . . Intelligent and original."
*New Scientist*

"A monumental book to read and ponder."
*AIDS Book Review Journal*

"A study marked by scrupulous attention to detail that is at the same time almost breathtaking in its scope and probing in its analysis. It is at once a fine contemporary history of science, a sociology of knowledge, and an account of the emergence and fate of a social movement driven by rage and passion."
*Science*

"For those seeking insights into what surely is the greatest medical story of our times, Impure Science provides a rich lode of contextual material from which to consider howe we got here."
*The Lancet*

"Lucid, balanced, and impressively well-documented."
*American Scientist*