Media Contact: Dolores Davies, (619) 534-5994 or ddavies@ucsd.edu

UC SAN DIEGO SOCIOLOGIST WINS AWARDS FOR BOOK ON AIDS ACTIVISM AND ITS IMPACT ON SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Sociologist Steven Epstein, an authority on AIDS activism and how it has transformed the nature of scientific knowledge and biomedical research practices has received three awards for his acclaimed book, "Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge," (University of California Press, 1996).

The awards include the Robert K. Merton Award from the American Sociological Association for best book on science, knowledge and technology, and the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems for best book on social issues. Most recently, Epstein also received the Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science for his book.

In addition to these prizes, the work on which "Impure Science" is based won Epstein the American Sociological Association’s award for best dissertation of the year.

In his book, which has just been issued in paperback, Epstein, an associate professor of sociology in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, explores how a critical mass of non-scientists, i.e. AIDS activists, revolutionized the way drugs are developed, regulated and tested, setting the stage for new challenges to scientific authority.

According to Epstein, AIDS activists, like no other patient-advocacy group before them, mastered the science of their disease in a way that changed the history of medicine. Angered by the slow pace of drug approval, AIDS activists armed themselves with medical knowledge and persistent and often loud, novel tactics, resulting in their ability to influence NIH-sponsored research and FDA regulations to a remarkable extent.

While health activist groups like Act Up became infamous for their sometimes outrageous tactics, their real impact, says Epstein, has been in the way they influenced the scientific process.

"The lay members of this movement are not the first lay people to put forward claims to speak credibly on biomedical matters, " Epstein wrote in his introduction. "But, this is indeed the first social movement in the U.S. to accomplish this large-scale conversion of disease victims into activist-experts."

Although books and articles chronicling the AIDS epidemic are legion, "Impure Science" is one of the few books to analyze the way that scientific knowledge is constructed through controversy and claims-making.

Epstein’s investigation focuses on the critical question of how certainty is constructed or deconstructed, i.e. how scientific knowledge is "made." Because of the blurring of roles and responsibilities between medical researchers, activists, policy makers and others, says Epstein, the production of biomedical knowledge about AIDS does not follow the pathways common to science. If, he writes, the "purity" of science is guaranteed by its insulation from external pressures, then AIDS research is a clear-cut case of impure science.

Epstein is currently working on a new book that will examine recent federal policy changes requiring medical researchers to include greater numbers of women and racial and ethnic minorities in government-funded clinical trials. His study will be the first in-depth investigation of a significant change in the organization of medical research that directly affects everyday clinical practice.