https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17116565
Sławomir Łotysz, PhD
Professor,
Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy
of Sciences
[s.lotysz@gmail.com], ORCID: 0000-0003-4426-6401
The Fear of AIDS in Late Socialist Poland[1]
Abstract: 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 mainstream 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. Unverified 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.
Keywords: AIDS; health; censorship; media; public fear.
[1] This article resulted from the research project MEDEP – ‘Media and Epidemics: Techniques for the Popularisation of Public Health Knowledge in the 20th and 21st Centuries’. Project MEDEP is supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, UK Research and Innovation, United Kingdom, and the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development & Innovation Funding, Romania, under the CHANSE ERA-NET Co-fund programme, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement no. 101004509. National Science Centre grant no. 2021/03/Y/HS3/00283.
- Declaration by Authors
- Ethical Approval: Approved
- Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.