Risky Rhetoric
AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing

This is a study of the rhetoric inherent in and surrounding HIV testing. The author explains how faulty arguments about testing's power and effects have promoted unresponsive and even dangerous testing practices for so-called normal subjects as well as those deemed risky.

These arguments have also created a perception that testing is a magic bullet. By overestimating the benefits of HIV testing and overlooking its contingencies and harmful effects, dominant arguments about testing have enabled a shortsighted public health response to HIV and unresponsive testing policies. Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing is to offer strategies to policymakers, HIV educators and test counselors, and other rhetors for developing more responsive and egalitarian testing-related rhetorics and practices.