The Treatment and Prevention of HIV Bodies: The Contemporary Politics and Science of a Thirty-Year-Old Epidemic

Thirty-five years into the struggle against HIV/AIDS, we are still being outwitted. The rapid mutation and replication of the complex human immunodeficiency virus outpaces our bodies’ immune response despite medical intervention (we have yet to find a cure or a vaccine); treatment and prevention strategies are often thwarted by systemic racism, misogyny, and homo- and transphobias; poverty and the criminalization of people with HIV further stigmatize the epidemic; and our failure to remember the lessons of the virus’s three-and-a-half-decades history, all taken together, have allowed HIV to thrive. This essay critically explores our contemporary strategies to combat the virus. Traditionally,