ABSTRACT
In urban areas dominated by the illegal drug trade, re-use of needles, drug injection, unsafe sex, and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are a dangerous combination of social practice and biology. It is here that epidemiologists, ethnographers and the media are tracking the fastest progression of HIV infection in the United States (Turner, Miller and Moses, 1989; Des Jarlais, Friedman and Stoneburner, 1988). But HIV moves insidiously through bodily fluids. Behind the attention-getting drug scene, the virus may tap more and more deeply into the roots of our minority communities, constituting the gradual, rather than explosive spread into the heterosexual population predicted by the chief epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control (Altman, 1987). As intravenous (IV) drug users become exposed and infected to HIV through used needles and have unprotected, penetrative sex with their partners, HIV continues to spread. A ‘general public’ immune to HIV infection is a fiction that undermines public health efforts to prevent AIDS among individuals who do not necessarily identify themselves or their partners with high-risk groups even though epidemiologically they may fit in such categories. Ethnographic analysis of individual experience and social practice reveals the weakness of the opposition between ‘general public’ and ‘high-risk groups’ when used for research or education.
