AIDS, Rhetoric, and Medical Knowledge [Hardcover]

This 2005 book shows how scientific knowledge about epidemics is shaped by the broader culture of advanced societies.This book examines the formation of scientific knowledge about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and shows the broader cultural assumptions which grounded these knowledge. Alex Preda highlights the metaphors, narratives, and classifications which framed scientific hypotheses about the nature of the infectious agent and its transmission ways and compares these arguments with those used in the scientific knowledge about SARS. Through detailed rhetorical analysis of biomedical publications, the author shows how scientific knowledge about epidemics is shaped by cultural narratives and categories of social thought.This book examines the formation of scientific knowledge about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and shows the broader cultural assumptions which grounded these knowledge. Alex Preda highlights the metaphors, narratives, and classifications which framed scientific hypotheses about the nature of the infectious agent and its transmission ways and compares these arguments with those used in the scientific knowledge about SARS. Through detailed rhetorical analysis of biomedical publications, the author shows how scientific knowledge about epidemics is shaped by cultural narratives and categories of social thought.Examining the formation of scientific knowledge about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Alex Preda highlights the metaphors, narratives, and classifications which framed scientific hypotheses about the nature of the infectious agent and its transmission. Preda compares these arguments with those used in the scientific analysis of SARS. He demonstrates how scientific knowledge about epidemics is shaped by cultural narratives and categories of social thought through a detailed review of biomedical publications.Introduction: AIDS and scientific knowledge; 1. Making up the rules of seeing: opportunistic infections and the new syndrome; 2. The economylc+