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The bioethics tabloids: How professional ethicists have fallen for the myth of tertiary transmitted heterosexual AIDS

  • Analysing Ethics
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Abstract

The hysteria and misconceptions about AIDS which are fostered and held by the popular press have been accepted uncritically by many bioethicists, who have not bothered to explore popular empirical claims in sufficient depth. As a result, and because ethicists attempt tosell moral problems in a manner not much different from the way the popular press attempt tosell newspapers, artificial dilemmas have been produced in professional journals. We concentrate on just one popular misconception about AIDS-that the hetersexual incidence of the syndrome is widespread-and showhow bioethicists' unreflective acceptance of this myth has led them to make conceptual and practical errors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Udo Schüklenk

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    David Mertz

  3. Department of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Juliet Richters

Authors
  1. Udo Schüklenk
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  2. David Mertz
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  3. Juliet Richters
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Schüklenk, U., Mertz, D. & Richters, J. The bioethics tabloids: How professional ethicists have fallen for the myth of tertiary transmitted heterosexual AIDS. Health Care Anal 3, 27–36 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02197191

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