Since the official beginnings of the AIDS phenomenon in 1981, there has been growing awareness that AIDS is not merely "a gay disease," but an activity-related disease. As early as 1982, ethnographers were examining settings and activities that public health officials speculated were relevant to the transmission of the HIV. Des Jarlais, Friedman, and Strug (1986) shed light on the actual interactional mechanisms at work among intravenous drug users (IVDUs), whom public health officials already knew were highly at risk of contracting HIV. The federally funded National AIDS Demonstration Research Project (NADR) in September 1987 drew information from and targeted education, intervention, and referral services to three high-risk groups: IVDUs not in formal drug programs; sexual partners of IVDUs; and prostitutes in New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Houston. There are now 41 NADR programs operating in over 60 sites in the United States. Ethnographers' role in the AIDS crisis has become rather holistic because of the urgency of saving lives and alleviating suffering. 2 notes and 28 references