Resources

Patient Zero and the Early North American HIV/AIDS Epidemic is a class resource for college and university undergraduates and their instructors. This resource explores the emergence and the historical precedents of the enduring, popular misconception that the North American HIV/AIDS epidemic originated with a single, identifiable individual--Patient Zero. The exploration of the social, cultural, and medical responses to the emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus in the 1980s reveals how people misattributed the introduction of HIV/AIDS in North America to a single person after misreading an epidemiological term. Upon what historical precedents did this misconception draw? How did this misconception affect how people understood HIV/AIDS and subsequent epidemics?

ClinicalInfo offers access to the latest, federally approved HIV/AIDS medical practice guidelines, an HIV drug database, a glossary of HIV-related terms, and resources related to HIV-related research for health care providers, researchers, people affected by HIV/AIDS, and the general public.

Circulating Now, the blog of the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Division, features a number of posts highlighting HIV/AIDS-related, historical collection items.

HIV/AIDS Web Archive is a collection of over 150 websites on the biomedical, clinical, cultural, and social aspects of HIV/AIDS in the early 21st century. The collection’s principal themes are HIV treatment, HIV prevention, biomedical research on HIV/AIDS, clinical care for HIV patients, living with HIV, and social-cultural responses to HIV/AIDS.