For twenty years, the HIV epidemic has been defined largely by the dominant Western medical system of biomedicine

For twenty years, the HIV epidemic has been defined largely by the dominant Western medical system of biomedicine. Epidemiological studies have identified the virus and its transmission pathways and biomedical institutions, such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), have shaped mainstream intervention programs. Theoretically, biomedicine has the information and resources available to control the epidemic. However, the virus still infects millions of people annually, largely in non-Western societies. The continued smolder of the epidemic is tragic evidence that the current response is ineffective. Within this context, the continued spread of HIV therefore serves as an impetus to critically analyze the current medical approaches. I use critical medical anthropology (CMA) to establish a framework on which biomedical interpretations of the epidemic are deconstructed and analyzed. This analysis is based on the CDC’s 2001 plan for HIV interventions and other biomedical literature on the epidemic. Critiquing the dominant discourse is vital to understanding the underlying ideologies and theories of the biomedical discourse on HIV. Through the CMA critique, I show how biomedicine is based largely on culturally-specific notions. These views shape the biomedical response, but they also make the exportation of biomedical discourse into other cultures problematic. Before mounting such a critique, however, we must first explore how biomedicine understands the HIV epidemic. Starting with the viral pathway, biomedicine’s approach in dealing with the epidemic is a complicated process that involves science, politics, and public health. Yet the subsequent intervention programs are all based on the construction of the epidemic as a biological phenomenon. My research shows that this viewpoint, and its underlying ideology, is often culturally-specific to societies that are ingrained with Western values.