The Fear of AIDS in Late Socialist Poland
Keywords:
AIDS; health; censorship; media; public fearAbstract
The emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s, a new deadly disease that attacked the human immune system, caused panic around the world. The fear of AIDS led to the stigmatisation of its victims and even to acts of violence against them. Much of the blame for the spread of panic lay with the media, which hysterically portrayed AIDS as the plague of the twentieth century or the wrath of God. Even the main-stream media perpetuated prejudices against the two main risk groups – men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users. The lack of reliable health education, which failed in many countries, exacerbated the situation. Fear of AIDS arrived in Poland from the West before HIV itself. The article argues that the Polish media exacerbated the panic surrounding AIDS in Poland in the late 1980s. Unver-ified information and fear-mongering predictions found fertile ground in a society marked by a low-levels of health education and widespread mistrust in the efficiency of the national health service. The communist authorities failed to stem the tide, even though they had a powerful tool at their disposal – censorship.
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