Challenge & Innovation

Chapter 1

The Methodological Imagination

Mary Boulton

In the early 1980s, Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) infection and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were recognized as threatening the most devastating infectious disease epidemic of the twentieth century. It was soon realized that an enormous effort would be needed to understand the disease, to provide care and treatment for those affected by it and to limit its spread within the population. While biological scientists and the medical profession began the hard drive towards finding effective treatments and vaccines, it was recognized that for the foreseeable future, the only effective way to combat the epidemic was through understanding and altering the behaviours by which it ...