Dissertation Research: The Tainted Gift: A comparative study of the framings of risk and safety of the contamination of the blood supply with AIDS virus in France and the U.S

本论文研究项目旨在研究风险和安全的框架，以及对哪些实体构成风险的理解，随着时间的推移而变化，以及这些变化如何影响政治，技术，社会和医疗决策。它将集中在法国和美国的血液供应与艾滋病病毒的污染。通过对风险认知的动态过程的考察，以及从一个元素网络中构建风险的概念对象，本研究将追踪科学和/或政治争论的一个插曲，并努力解决为什么试图遏制危机往往会产生相反效果的问题。1980年代初的血液污染为追踪风险概念对象的继承和相互作用提供了一个特别好的场所。拟议的项目涉及1980年代中期，当时对艾滋病的病因学还没有很好的了解，而对这一疾病的认识正在迅速发展。此外，尚未明确界定“有风险”的人群。血友病患者根据他们以前患肝炎的经历来描述这种威胁，血库工作人员努力应对充足血液供应的威胁，两国的医生都将病毒抗体确定为保护指标和感染指标。通过追踪风险对象来研究血液供应中的艾滋病，可以更普遍地更好地了解风险的动态。它对评估风险认知、识别和政策制定过程中的变化的作用具有社会意义，并可以为政策相关领域、公共卫生、风险管理和卫生相关领域的学者和专业人员提供关于潜在风险的知识，特别是在处理极不确定和严重潜在后果的情况时，例如20世纪80年代的艾滋病或今天的变异型克雅氏病。NSF的资金将主要用于华盛顿/巴尔的摩地区的档案工作，该地区拥有与该项目相关的最多的采访和研究地点。

This dissertation research project proposes to examine how framings of risk and safety, and understandings about which entities pose risks, change over time, and how these changes influence political, technical, social, and medical decisions. It will focus on the contamination of the blood supply with the AIDS virus in France and the United States. Through examination of the dynamic process of risk perception and the construction of conceptual objects of risk from a network of elements, this study will trace an episode of contention of science and/or politics, and grapple with the question of why attempts to contain crisis can often have the opposite effect. The contamination of blood during the early 1980s provides a particularly good site for tracing the succession and interaction of conceptual objects of risk. The proposed project covers the mid-1980s when the etiology of AIDS was not well understood, and when knowledge about the disease was evolving rapidly. In addition, the populations "at risk" for the disease were not yet well defined. Hemophiliacs framed the threat in terms of their previous experience with hepatitis, blood bankers struggled against a threat to an adequate supply of blood, and doctors in both countries identified antibodies to the virus as indicators of protection and as indicators of infection. The study of AIDS in the blood supply by tracing risk objects can provide a better understanding of the dynamics of risk more generally. It is socially significant for assessing the role of risk perception, identification, and change in policy making processes, and can point to new ways of producing knowledge about potential risk for scholars and professionals in policy-related areas, public health, risk management, and health-related fields, particularly when dealing with situations of great uncertainty and grave potential consequences, such as AIDS in the 1980s or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease today. NSF funds will pay primarily for archival work in the Washington/Baltimore area, which has the largest number of interview and research sites relevant to the project.