HEALTH & MEDICINE

摘要

In the mid-1990s, Brazil created an international model for AIDS treatment by making antiretrovirals available to any registered HIV patient. To examine this system's impact, Biehl (anthropology, Princeton Univ.; Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment) spent much of the last decade visiting Brazilian AIDS treatment centers and interviewing administrators, medical personnel, and patients. Here, he compiles his findings and discusses the "pharmaceuticalization of public health," wherein access to medication has become the primary focus of public health. However, as this scholarly ethnography clearlyrnillustrates, treatment success is not limited to drug distribution. While AIDS medications have improved the lives of many Brazilians, others, particularly the poor, may get lost in the system.