Foucault
and
Aids

It is a terrible irony of the Foucauldian anti-medicalization argument that Foucault himself died of Aids at the age of 57, that he didn't practice safe sex, and didn't know about HIV transmission until a few months before his death.

It is even said that Foucault initially discounted Aids as a mythical homosexual-targeting disease invented by the medical superstructure to control male homosexuality; in this sense, he was a literally victim of his own conspiracy theories. In other words, we might all have benefited had Foucault undergone some "medicalisation" and "hygienisation."

--- From Elif Batuman's Review of
Philosophy in Turbulent Times
Elizabeth Roudinesco
(Columbia)
The LRB
20 November 2008