9 Within the African American community, however, specific rumors continue to persist, rumors that understand HIV/AIDS as a genocidal government plot against African Americans. And they succeeded as solid, official information developed, general anxiety about HIV/AIDS slowly receded, and so did the stories-most HIV/AIDS rumors have disappeared. They demanded action commensurate with the health crisis: scientific knowledge to replace fears, ignorance, and uninformed suppositions. 7 As the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis forced scientists and health professionals to change their habits and practices, partly because of the science of the virus but largely because of effective social activism by AIDS-affected lay groups, 8 those same groups invested their faith in the health professions community. 3,4 Rumors about HIV/AIDS proliferated throughout US society: only gay people can get AIDS 5 you can catch it from a doorknob, a toilet seat, or a swimming pool flying insects can transmit it women are tricking men into having sex with them so they can give them AIDS 4 AIDS was developed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill off African Americans and gays 6 it’s not caused by a virus at all.
2,3 Furthermore, the trust and knowledge networks that support rumors are typically bound by the same elements of social stratification that constitute racial and ethnic identities and subgroups people circulate stories to people they know and trust, and only retell stories with meaning or resonance. Initially, AIDS rumors were widespread, because the social context provided what rumor theorists have identified as fertile ground for the growth and persistence of rumors: a dearth of trusted information in conjunction with high levels of social anxiety. Understanding the forces that cause and sustain distrust among African Americans is essential to reducing rates of HIV infection, and this requires recognition of the role of HIV/AIDS rumors-their origins, spread, and capacity to resist contrary information. This applies equally to prevention and treatment: no HIV/AIDS program that requires action by the public-however valid or well-originated-can succeed when people distrust the program’s sponsors or the sources of information about the disease. These relationships, however, work only if people trust the sources of official information.
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