The NIH's slow response to the AIDS epidemic and the dismissal of Pasteur's contributions: Learning from history

Abstract

The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) slow response to the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s led to deaths and missed opportunities to stop the spread of the disease. In addition, the NIH systematically diminished the contributions of the scientists at the Pasteur Institute who discovered HIV and produced a superior AIDS test. I analyze these events by applying three social theories to the global response to the epidemic. Structuration, interorganizational learning, and negotiated order theories shed light on (1) the delay by the NIH in providing grants for AIDS research, (2) the inability of the NIH to learn about the epidemic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and (3) the NIH's dismissal of AIDS discoveries by a team of Pasteur scientists. Lastly, I give suggestions to enable effective cooperation among health agencies to better respond to future epidemics.