AEGiS-APPJ: Ethics, Culture, and Medical Power: AIDS Research in the Third World

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Ethics, Culture, and Medical Power: AIDS Research in the Third World

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 15-24
Alfred J. Fortin

This article consists of four separate but related discussions that are all motivated by an interest in how medical ethics has come to address the issues that are emerging from recent AIDS research in the Third World. These discussions are meant to explore the political character of medical ethics, paying particular attention to the exercise of disciplinary power as it circulates within ethical discourse. This analysis is also influenced by a concern, expressed in previous work, that as the AIDS epidemic encompasses more lives within its death grip, it increasingly becomes a vehicle for the mobilization and growth of the hegemonic technical and political power of Western medicine. The first section of this article speaks generally to the issue of ethics and power, followed by an attempt to situate medical ethics within the politics of modern medicine. The author then reviews the recent literature on the ethics of AIDS research in Africa and ends with a critical reading of this debate. Attempts are made to link these discussions throughout the article, although, admittedly, more questions and issues are generated than can be adequately considered. Yet even this grief excursion reveals a wealth of avenues for continued examination and critique.
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