AIDS, in its early years in particular was a disease surrounded by history. Historians actively sought to bring the ‘lesson of history’ into the public debates. Even more surprisingly, policy makers were often prepared to listen. This essay will examine the various stages of the historical consciousness around AIDS (from the initial stage of ‘epidemic disease’ to the current period of normalization), will analyse of what the historical input has consisted, and will analyse, too, why history was initially so important. This historical consciousness has not, so far as AIDS is concerned, been applied to drug policy. Drugs have in the past, been an historically conscious area of health policy. But the impact of AIDS on drug policy has tended, in contrast, to be viewed ahistorically, as if all developments were totally new. Why this has been the case gives some insights into the uses of history as a policy-relevant science. This essay will also argue that history has a role to play in the analysis of post-AIDS drug policy – not least in drawing out some distinct themes and continuities with the pre-AIDS situation.

AIDS AND HISTORY: THE EARLY YEARS

The initial historical input into AIDS was marked. In the late twentieth century, laboratory and clinical science appeared to have conquered infectious, epidemic disease. According to the McKeown thesis (which stressed the role of nutrition rather than medical technology in conquering disease), medical discoveries and therapies may not have caused the decline in mortality of the nineteenth century, but they did have a significant impact in the twentieth.