Public Health

The Covid-19 pandemic changed our relationship with public health, perhaps irreparably. For many, it also changed their relationship to vaccination. Before Covid-19, few questioned the role of vaccines in public health. However, vaccine mandates, which were conflated – rightly or wrongly – with other mandated health measures, such as social distancing, face masks, and protracted lockdowns, meant that being vaccinated equated to an assault on individual freedom and well-being, the opposite of how vaccines were viewed in the past. Faith in the science supporting them is falling rapidly. According to leading epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre, the ‘impact of the anti-science movement and medical disinformation since the Covid-19 pandemic has been far-reaching’, resulting in lower vaccination rates across many preventable diseases. Add to this the ‘demonization of public health’ following the pandemic and the growing threat of a new pandemic, and you have a perfect public health storm brewing.

For those of us at the centre of the storm, Sharleen – the demonised HIV-positive Sydney prostitute, the tragic Eve Van Grafhorst – and ACT UP and its often surreal activities are all familiar memories from the first decade of the AIDS epidemic in Australia. All feature in this first book-length account of Australia’s response to the AIDS epidemic. National histories of the epidemic have already appeared in Britain, the Netherlands and the US, and Paul Sendziuk’s work bears comparison with them. Indeed, in the breadth of its sympathies, the sophistication of its conceptual approach and its focus on the working out of policies on the ground, it is the best national study I have read. For a book that originated in a PhD thesis, it is well written, with challenging illustrations, mostly drawn from AIDS campaign material. I should, of course, confess an interest, since this book provides an eloquent defence of the policies I pursued on AIDS during my period as the Commonwealth minister for health.