Sherwin XXXXXXXXXXlooked at the metaphors used by various interest groups in the HIV/AIDS issue, revealing how certain metaphors favour distinctive ways of thinking and showing that there are ethical...

Sherwin (2001) looked at the metaphors used by various interest groups in the HIV/AIDS issue, revealing how certain metaphors favour distinctive ways of thinking and showing that there are ethical implications arising from using particular metaphors. Sherwin argued that at one time epidemiologists favoured the metaphor ‘AIDS is a lifestyle disease’. This encouraged them to pursue certain sorts of scientific practices such as looking for a multifactorial disease model, attending to some social conditions such as sexual orientation and patterns of drug use. However, the metaphor discouraged other lines of inquiry such as investigating homosexual behaviour in men who considered themselves to be heterosexual. The epidemiologists also resisted for some time the suggestion that a single causal virus might be responsible for AIDS. High-risk groups therefore became the focus of attention, instead of high-risk behaviour. Sherwin's opinion was that the underlying metaphor discouraged the epidemiologists from considering other ways of thinking about AIDS, and because they were so dominant in the field there was some delay before the medical establishment eventually accepted the viral cause of AIDS. The ethical implication is that the metaphors used might have resulted in unnecessary suffering of AIDS patients and infection of people who might otherwise have been alerted earlier to the dangers they faced. Another way of representing this is that the different metaphors encouraged healthcare professionals to tell particular stories/narratives about AIDS.