Bridging the social and the biomedical: engaging the social and political sciences in HIV research

This supplement to the Journal of the International AIDS Society focuses on the engagement of the social and political sciences within HIV research and, in particular, maintaining a productive relationship between social and biomedical perspectives on HIV. It responds to a number of concerns raised primarily by social scientists, but also recognized as important by biomedical and public health researchers. These concerns include how best to understand the impact of medical technologies (such as HIV treatments, HIV testing, viral load testing, male circumcision, microbicides, and pre-and post-exposure prophylaxis) on sexual cultures, drug practices, relationships and social networks in different cultural, economic and political contexts. The supplement is also concerned with how we might examine the relationship between HIV prevention and treatment, understand the social and political mobilization required to tackle HIV, and sustain the range of disciplinary approaches needed to inform and guide responses to the global pandemic. The six articles included in the supplement demonstrate the value of fostering high quality social and political research to inform, guide and challenge our collaborative responses to HIV/AIDS

Book Reviews

The New Class War: Reagan\u27s Attack On The Welfare State and Its Consequences by Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. Reviewed by SAMUEL R. FRIEDMAN Social Service Politics In the United States and Britain by Willard C. Richan. Reviewed by GARY P. FREEMAN Mothers At Work: Public Policies In the United States. Sweden and China by Carolyn Teich Adams and Kathryn Teich Winston. Reviewed by SUSAN MEYERS CHANDLE

Assessing Individual and Disseminated Effects in Network-Randomized Studies

Implementation trials often involve clustering via risk networks, where only some participants directly received the intervention. The individual effect is that among directly treated persons beyond being in an intervention network; the disseminated effect is that among persons engaged with those directly treated. We employ a causal inference framework and discuss assumptions and estimators for individual and disseminated effects and apply them to HIV Prevention Trials Network 037. HIV Prevention Trials Network 037 was a Phase III, network-level, randomized controlled HIV prevention trial conducted in the US and Thailand from 2002 to 2006 that recruited persons who injected drugs, who received either intervention or control, and their risk network members, who received no direct intervention. Combining individual and disseminated, a 35% composite rate reduction was observed in the adjusted model (95% confidence interval = 0.47, 0.90). Methodology is now available to estimate the full set of these effects enhancing knowledge gained from network-randomized trials. Although the overall effect gains validity from network randomization, we show that it will, in general, be less than the composite effect. Additionally, if only index participants benefit from the intervention, as the network size increases, the overall effect tends to the null, an unfortunate and misleading conclusion

La drogue, le sexe, le sida et la survie dans la rue. Les voix de cinq femmes

La drogue, le sexe, le sida et la survie dans la rue Les voix de cinq femmesL'observation ethnographique d'un réseau d'une centaine d'utilisateurs de drogues par voie intraveineuse dans un quartier de New York en 1989 et 1990 nous a permis d'examiner leurs attitudes concernant le sida et les mesures de protection contre le VIH. Les récits et les expériences de cinq femmes qui s'injectaient de la drogue et qui gagnaient de l'argent en se prostituant constituent le cœur de cet article. À l'aide de témoignages comparables de leurs amis et de leurs proches, ainsi que d'un tableau plus général de l'usage des drogues et du commerce du sexe, nous avons obtenu des détails qui corroborent les événements qu'elles décrivent. Dans l'ensemble, il émerge de ces descriptions une certaine image récurrente des dangers et de la dure réalité de la survie dans la rue, faite de lutte constante contre le sort, de moments de désespoir, de solidarité et de dignité.Drugs, Sex, AIDS and Street Survival The Voice s of Five WomenThrough ethnographie observation of a network of about one hundred drug injectors in a neighborhood of New York City during 1989 and 1990, we examined attitudes expressed about AIDS and HIV-risk réduction. In the core of this paper are the words and expériences of five women who were injecting drugs and earning money through prostitution. Comparable expériences of friends and associâtes, and a wider picture of the context of drug use and sex sales, provide corroborative détails of the events they describe. Overall, a certain common perspective on the dangers and the hard realities of street survival émerges from thèse descriptions — one of striving against the odds, of episodic despair, of solidarity, and of dignity

Estimation of HIV-testing rates to maximize early diagnosis-derived benefits at the individual and population level

In HIV infection, initiation of treatment is associated with improved clinical outcom and reduced rate of sexual transmission. However, difficulty in detecting infection in early stages impairs those benefits. We determined the minimum testing rate that maximizes benefits derived from early diagnosis.Fil: Dilernia, Dario Alberto. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiologia. Centro Nacional de Referencia del Sida; Argentina; Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; Argentina;Fil: Mónaco, Daniela Celeste. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiologia. Centro Nacional de Referencia del Sida; Argentina; Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; Argentina;Fil: Cesar, Carina. Fundación Huésped; Argentina;Fil: Krolewiecki, Alejandro Javier. Fundación Huésped; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico - CONICET - Salta. Instituto de Patologia Experimental; Argentina;Fil: Friedman, Samuel R.. National Development and Research Institutes; Estados Unidos de América;Fil: Cahn, Pedro. Fundación Huésped; Argentina;Fil: Salomon, Horacio Eduardo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiologia. Centro Nacional de Referencia del Sida; Argentina; Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; Argentina

Strong isomorphism reductions in complexity theory

We give the first systematic study of strong isomorphism reductions, a notion of reduction more appropriate than polynomial time reduction when, for example, comparing the computational complexity of the isomorphim problem for different classes of structures. We show that the partial ordering of its degrees is quite rich. We analyze its relationship to a further type of reduction between classes of structures based on purely comparing for every n the number of nonisomorphic structures of cardinality at most n in both classes. Furthermore, in a more general setting we address the question of the existence of a maximal element in the partial ordering of the degrees

The conjugacy problem for the automorphism group of the random graph

We prove that the conjugacy problem for the automorphism group of the random graph is Borel complete, and discuss the analogous problem for some other countably categorical structures.Comment: 7 page