Some of society's reactions to AIDS parallel reactions to bubonic plague, cholera and other epidemics of the past, according to Catherine Kuklick, an assistant professor of history at UC Davis. The tendency to cast those stricken with the disease as scapegoats is one similarity, says Kuklick, who specializes in the social and cultural aspects of eppidemics. Because initially people with AAIDS in America were predominantly homosexual men, many in society blamed their "immorality" for the disease. Similarly, it was widely believed during the cholera outbreaks of the 19th century in America and Europe that the disease was confined to the lower classes because of their unsanitary living conditions. Another closely related social reaction is a belief in immunity by people who do not belong to the population(s) in which an epidemic is concentrated, Kudlick says. One difference concerning AIDS is that those who have the disease have exerted a greater amount of control over the way they are portrayed, and generally have been more successful in framing the disease in a political context, Kuklick says.