Learning to Trust: Australian Responses to Aids

2003 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first case of HIV-AIDS in Australia. Despite an initial climate of panic and stigmatisation, the country developed a pragmatic and innovative response to AIDS. Working from an extensive array of documents and interviews with key participants, Australia's response to the epidemic is examined to establish why it has been one of most effective responses in the world.

Paul Sendziuk is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, and has taught at that University in the areas of contemporary European and Australian history and the sociology of health and illness. His doctoral thesis was awarded the 2002 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the first case of HIV-AIDS in Australia. Despite an initial climate of panic and stigmatisation, the country developed a pragmatic and innovative response to AIDS that is regarded as one of the most effective in the world. However, as Paul Sendziuk explains in Learning to Trust, the situation might have been very different.

Working from an extensive array of documents and interviews with key participants, Sendziuk explores the principles of community empowerment and ‘harm minimisation’ that underpinned Australia's response to the epidemic, and examines the crucial role of activists, community-based organisations and politicians who forged Australia's success. The book draws upon the insights and testimonies of the gay men, drug users, sex workers and people with haemophilia who were devastated by the epidemic, and in so doing offers a moving glimpse into the lives.

Written with compassion and insight, Learning to Trust is the first book to chart the history of AIDS in Australia from both medical and policy perspectives, as well as the viewpoints of activists, sufferers, families and users grappling with illness and stigmatization themselves. Against the odds, all these players united to make Australia a world leader in the fight against AIDS. The book tells this story, showing how a society – those affected by AIDS and those who shunned people at risk –moved beyond intolerance and fear to a situation where it learned to trust.

Learning to Trust also makes clear that a history of AIDS is also a history of our ideas about sexuality, of public policy at one of its most important frontiers, and of activism – both governmental and community – with few counterparts in Australian history.

The book includes more than 43 illustrations, including photographs and artwork, and an 8-page colour section.

Table of contents

Preface

List of Table and Figures

1. ‘Anally Injected Death Sentence’ - The ‘Homosexual Lifestyle’ and the Origins of AIDS
2. Australia’s Blood Supply - People with Haemophilia in Crisis
3. Beyond Blame - Queensland Babies and the Construction of Homosexual Guilt
4. Challenges to the Traditional Model of Infectious Disease Control
5. ‘If it’s not on, it’s not on’ - The Triumph of Safe Sex and Community-Based Education
6. ‘Is it Safe to Go Bowling?’ - Reconsidering the ‘Grim Reaper’ Aids Education Campaign
7. Diving Under the ‘Second Wave’ - Needle and Syringe Exchange and HIV Prevention
8. ‘Cash is not a body fluid, HIV is not spread on credit cards’ - The Case of HIV-Positive Sex Workers
9. People Living with HIV/AIDS Take the Stage

Endnotes

Sources

Index