Aids

The AIDS epidemic has been accompanied by negative public reactions to persons presumed, to be infected by the immunodeficiency virus (HIV). As with other diseases throughout much of history, such as the Bubonic plague in the fourteenth century and the cholera outbreaks in the nineteenth century, a stigma has been attached to AIDS. Like AIDS itself, the AIDS stigma is a global problem, existing in communities with different social, traditional and religious beliefs. Attaching a stigma to AIDS has been primarily the result of both fear surrounding contagion and preexisting prejudice against the social groups most seriously affected by the epidemic.
Concern about contagion does not only exist in the physical realm, but also extends and deepens the fear that one will be socially or morally tainted by interacting with a stigmatized individual. People tend to socialize less with people who are known to have AIDS, or those that are known to have contracted the virus through their irrespons...