ABSTRACT
AIDS treatment activism emerged in the United States (US) in the second half of the 1980s as a response to at least two major factors: the direct experience of acute illness and death presented by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and a lack of confidence in the capacity or willingness of the medical and pharmaceutical industries to act in the interests of people living with HIV or AIDS. Against a background of profoundly negative social perceptions of the constituencies worst affected by AIDS in the developed world, gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users and their sexual partners, the question of how medical information is generated, by whom and for whom became of major significance for those involved-especially those infected and their immediate friends, families, carers and communities.
