Blood Feuds: AIDS, Blood, and the Politics of Medical Disaster

Blood Feuds: AIDS, Blood, and the Politics of Medical Disaster is a scholarly collection edited by Eric A. Feldman and Ronald Bayer, who also wrote the introduction and some thematic chapters. The book brings together several prominent experts in the fields of public health, law, medicine, sociology, and health policy, and together they analyze one of the greatest medical and political crises of the late 20th century – the contamination of blood supplies with the HIV virus.

The first part of the collection presents detailed case studies from the United States, Japan, France, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Australia, showing how different health systems, regulatory bodies, and political institutions responded to the threat of HIV transmission through transfusion and blood products.

The second part offers comparative analyses of the cultural, economic, legal, and social aspects of the crisis, including the role of hemophiliac activism, the information economy, and the symbolic meaning of blood in contemporary society. The final chapters synthesize common patterns of state responses and consider institutional accountability, risk management, and lessons for future public health crises.

The collection represents a valuable interdisciplinary contribution to research in public health, medical ethics, health policy, and comparative law.