Mortal Secrets : Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS

As treatments for HIV have improved, unsafe sexual behavior has increased and efforts at prevention have stalled.

Many of those infected continue to fear and experience rejection and discrimination.

For many, decisions about disclosure force them to confront intimate, fundamental, and rarely discussed questions about truth, lies, sex, and trust.

Drawing from interviews with more than seventy gay men and women, intravenous drug users, sex workers, bisexual men, and heterosexual men and women, the authors provide a detailed portrait of moral, social, and psychological decision making.

The interviews convey the complex emotions that shape individual dilemmas about whether to disclose, deceive, or trust.

Addressing broad debates about the nature of secrecy, morality, and silence, this book explores public policy questions in the light of the nuanced, private decisions that are shaping the course of this relentless epidemic.