Bisexuality and HIV/AIDS: A Global Perspective

edited by Rob Tielman and Manuel Carballo

As of June 1st, 1991, over 366,000 cases of AIDS have been reported to the World Health Organization; it is estimated that some 1.5 million men, women, and children worldwide already have full-blown AIDS, and 8 to 10 million are HIV-positive.

While the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been successfully isolated, a cure and even a viable vaccine are probably years away. The scientific and medical communities have striven to identify and educate high-risk groups, but what of those groups who are at high risk but difficult to find and inform? Bisexuals are one such group. Because of their low social visibility and traditional exclusion from health-promotion services, their global impact on the spread of HIV/AIDS has remained largely unknown — until now.

In Bisexuality and HIV/AIDS: A Global Perspective, internationally recognized researcher Rob A. P. Tielman and his colleagues, Manuel Carballo and Aart C Hendriks, have brough together leading experts in the fields of sociology, psychology, medicine, and community health to address aspects of the spread of HIV/AIDS among bisexuals. Included are studies of cross-cultural patterns of bisexuality, prevention methods, and the spread of the disease among bisexual drug users, prostitutes, and adolescents.

Part 1 contains reports from autohrities from more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Costa Rica, India, Thailand, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United States, and the United Kingdom, which attest to the international scope of the epidemic and the medical community’s concern about this life threatening disease. Part 2 focuses on patterns of bisexual behavior among various social groups. It also contains a review of the current literature on bisexuality and HIV transmission, and ends with a spirited plea for AIDS prevention programs within a context of social tolerance and a respect for the right to individual self-determination.

Sound knowledge about the spread of HIV remains our best — indeed, our only — defense until a cure for AIDS can be found. Bisexuality and HIV/AIDS: A Global Perspective serves a much-needed purpose in providing the information that has hitherto been lacking about a critically important at-risk population.