The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA

"Epigraphs are drawn from the work of one of the most respected and influential sociologists of the twentieth century - that would be the late Ralph Turner - and a snarky UCLA graduate student- that would be me. Juxtaposed, they show how much activism around questions of health and disease has shifted over the last several decades. Writing in 1972, Dr. Turner captured the general view that illnesses like cancer were equal opportunity diseases. Very few of those suffering from cancer would have attributed the cause of that cancer to negligence by others, and therefore the means of generating the moral outrage that would turn misfortune to injustice was lacking. But moral outrage around health issues was just around the corner. By the end of the 1970s, the feminist women's health movement was in full swing, challenging sexist health practices, doctors' paternalistic authority over women, inequalities in health care delivery, and prevailing standards in resource allocation for research. Views on what caused disease and who was responsible for health changed, and the feminist health movement spilled over (Meyer and Whittier 1994), spawning other movements that worked to pave the way for a large-scale democratization of the culture of medical treatment and research"-- Provided by publisher.