Criminalizing HIV

I think people who know they have HIV and don't inform their sexual partners should receive the same legal status as people with Tuberculosis who step outside for a walk.

Which by and large, is what people do. The media will find those 1 or 2 cases per year and report on them extensively, but I'm not sure it's such a widespread problem and from the sound of Girlieboy's statistics it is not.

Babble is an interesting forum, and is going to be a learning experience for me!

Thanks for your comments, Remind. I hear you. I've had friends too, who were overcome with despair, getting an HIV+ diagnosis. The loss of those amazing people is devastating. The truth is, I hate the loss of any people, to any thing, that could have been prevented. We have to speak though, about what we know, and criminalizing HIV is just not going to prevent those losses.

People who are marginalized are less inclined to protect themselves - to even believe they are worthy of protection. I think that is the appropriate focus: Protection.

Sex is going to happen. As the song says, it's natural and its good. I believe that. I also believe that it isn't, always, and that is when there isn't consent, or when participants aren't taking responsibility for themselves.

Disease does not dress itself up as a demon, to warn us. It more often hides itself - sometimes inside that OMG he is sooo cute and hot and in to me package.

Using condoms can prevent a whole lot of heartache. Protect yourelf. That should be the message: Always protect yourself. Nailing the evil disease-spreader is too late for the recipient.

And thanks, 500-Apples. Like, where do you stop? I know where the kind of reaction we are seeing from the justice system often gets started, and that is when it involves issues that create some discomfort:  sex; promiscuity; gay sex... I guess it's an easier road than actually caring for people.

My first boyfriend has been living with HIV for about 20 years now. Other people I know have herpes. In fact, the majority of the population has herpes in one form or another. We all have the potential to infect someone, without knowing it for the most part. 

I do not think criminalizing HIV is the answer. Where do the rights and responsibilities associated with sex fall? On the person with HIV, or on the partner? If on the person with HIV, at what point do you disclose? At what point is it the non-infected person's responsibility to ensure protection? I have heard stories from friends of mine that are HIV positive, and also from status free people and guess what? There are many people out there willing to risk contracting HIV. Willing to go bareback. Willing to take on that responsibility. Sometimes even begging to have unprotected sex with a carrier. I'm sure this is due to possibly two things 1) the relative possibility that, even through unsafe sex with an HIV positive person the chances of getting it are not that high, and b) through some strange psychology, these people wish to be infected (yes I do believe these people are out there). 

Hard to feel sorry for a man who picks up a trick, knowing the potential of this trick being positive. Hard to feel bad for someone who takes this risk while usually insisting on not using a condom.

I had a very open discussion with my first boyfriend about disclosure and I agreed with what how he handles this. He is very open about his status. He has zero problems with disclosure. Yet...he still gets told to not wear a condom. Although this makes him extremely uncomfortable, he is often unsure of how to deal with this. If they are serious, and really really insist, he will have sex with them. Does he blame himself if they ever contract HIV? I don't think he really should. People who insist of having unsafe sex with an HIV infected partner know full well they assume a risk, and although my ex tells them in no uncertain terms about this risk, the majority will still go through with it. So here is the line. Who is responsible in this situation? he has fully disclosed his status, and they don't care. 

In the end, IMO, it is the responsibility of the infected person to disclose when they feel comfortable, or when there is going to be sex. That allows the other party to them make a decision of taking that risk. It squarely puts the burden back on them. If they are willing to take it (and really, some are) then they have to live with the potential outcome. 

I think it's also important to note that when HIV was statistically (in North America) affecting mostly the MSM community (men who have sex with men) there was no talk of needing to disclose or face criminal punishment. The talk of disclosure went on in the queer community of course, but it was presented as a complex sexual, health and personal ethical issue. Which of course is what it is.

Now that more and more self-identified straight people are becoming infected, all of a sudden disclosure is a huge issue.

Why?

My take is that before it was "people who don't matter that much" ie gay men and now it's "people who do matter" ie straight people.

AIDS and HIV have been with us for what, over 30 years? And only now this draconian stuff comes out?

 P.S. Girlieboy, welcome to babble! I look forward to reading more of your posts! 

Personally, if I was HIV + and someone wanted to have sex with me without protection, I would never ever have sex with them. Same for if I had HPV.

In fact, I have ended a friendship with a long time friend because she was having an affair with a married man, and having unprotected sex, while knowing full well, she has HPV, and would be transmitting it to him and he in turn would be taking that back to his wife, while suffering no ill affects himself. Though she did not tell him even for him to give informed consent.

Girlieboy, have a look at this, reported in the Toronto Star today. many things problematic with this story:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/607828

"Percy Whiteman contends he never would have been infected with the AIDS-causing virus if the government had begun mandatory HIV testing of immigrants sooner than 2001, given what was known years earlier about the disease.

She was convicted of aggravated assault and criminal negligence causing bodily harm in 2007 and sentenced to two years in prison.

Iamkhong, now facing deportation to her native Thailand, is appealing her conviction and sentence.

In convicting Iamkhong, Justice Todd Ducharme cited five reasons for not believing her. Among them was her failure to tell Whiteman about the Canadian test.

As it turns out, Ducharme made a mistake and the evidence shows Iamkhong did discuss the test with her husband, Crown counsel David Lepofsky conceded yesterday.

But Campbell told the panel the sentence carried immigration consequences nobody considered. Sentences of two years or more deprive offenders such as Iamkhong, a landed immigrant, of the right to appeal a deportation order on humanitarian grounds."

This man is asking for 33 million from the Federal government. 

I have a lot to say about this one, but would like to hear from some other people first as to the Star article. 

Good point!

I have mixed feelings about this topic.  My clients are recovering drug addicts with a history of IV drug abuse, and their sometimes-problematic behaviour complicates the good and noble idea that sick people shouldn't be criminalized.

For instance:

1.  HIV-positive people spitting at me saying, "Hope you catch AIDS, bitch."  (I'm a hardass when it comes to dodgy Oxycontin prescriptions.)

2.  People deliberately trying to get HIV (Dan Savage calls these people "bug chasers") because they like the attention, or they want to get more narcotics. 

3.  People falsely claiming to be HIV-positive in an attempt to get narcotics.

My take: there are some nasty, psychopathic people in the world, and if they get HIV, they may use it as a weapon.  And they should be criminally prosecuted. 

Some of them are psychopaths.  A diagnosis of psychopathy is associated with a higher incidence of drug abuse.

My "troubling and non-productive" commentary is from the front lines of health care, treating some of the most difficult patients in the country.  I don't seek to stigmatize vulnerable people, but there has to be a balance between individual rights and public safety.

Basically, I'm saying that some people will knowingly spread (or willingly contract) HIV, whatever their pathology or motivations.  Whether or not they are worthy of compassion and treatment is besides the point.

I think Sineed meant that  psychopaths are more likely to be drug addicts than the overall population - not that most drug addicts are psychopaths. A psychopath generally does not have much guilt or believe that they have anything to feel guilty for, whereas most of the people I have worked with that are addicted to one substance or another felt enormous amounts of guilt, self-esteem issues for any harm their disease has caused to themselves, family, and loved ones - and related to childhood trauma/abuse. I think only one person that I have worked with would be considered a psycopath/ASP. 

 The macro stats are useful for analysis at this level, however it seems that Sineed works with a specific population that would probably not be anywhere near representative of overall society. Even if that tiny percent are ASP, they are still going to affect individual lives in serious and negative ways and should be held responsible. 

 This is a difficult issue legally, due to the burden of proof and privacy issues. However, condoms break and are not foolproof. I think expecting someone with HIV to tell their sexual partner about their condition is a reasonable expectation - however the burden of proof should remain beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than the balance of probabilities. 

Individuals should still take responsibility, get tested and practice safe sex with trustworthy people who they have asked directly whether they have been tested. 

No ghislaine, ASP are not more likelier to become drug addicts than the general population, the general population is just as likely to become drug addicts and do.

Think about what you said,  "most of the people I have worked with that are addicted to one substance or another", they have become addicted no?

Thanks for getting us back on topic Martin.  I have a hard time disagreeing with what you posted.

I agree completely with girlieboy.

Off Topic:

 I agree with Remind.  In the 3 types of people that Sineed Mentioned

1.  The first one it sounds like a reaction of anger when you refuse to give a perscription, a psychopath has very blunted emotions and focus on manipulation.  If they can't get what they want they will not react with anger because it may  interfere with future manipulations so they would more likely move on and try to manipulate somewhere else.  That is why they can hide so long, they are the boy next door personality not the angry personality.

2.Psychopaths have an extremely inflated sense of self and like to exploit others.  They would be exploiting themselves in this case and it doesn't fit with how psychopaths work, they wouldn't want to harm themselves.

3. Falsing claiming to be HIV to get drugs.  Yes this could be psychopathic, it could be drug addictive behaviour, it could be a child who lies about wanting a candy, it could be me.  You can't put this one off to psychopatic behaviour because lying to get what you want falls in the range of pretty much everyone does it.

I don't think saying that knowingly spreading HIV is a psychopathic behaviour is anymore helpful than saying murder is a psychopathic behaviour.  I agree with remind that it only serves to stigmatize the people who need help that are harming themselves (and others).  It may, also, interfere in helping these people with the pain in their lives.

It seems to me that you being in the front line must see this so, like remind I am hopeful that your post just came across the wrong way.

OnTopic:

Girlieboy thanks for the post.  A good reminder that most people who are spreading HIV are not spreading it with knowledge of their status. 

I commend you  on your struggle, that is a life changing thing to have to live with HIV day in and day out.  It sounds like you are doing it with openess, honesty and courage.

"When we are in a post-AIDS time, what will have been the successful sexual transmission awarensess component of the strategy to get us there - jailing the scumbag, or stressing the importance of using condoms?"

Presenting these actions as mutually exclusive is misleading - sanctions are one strong manner of stressing that importance beyond moral discourse - ...and using "scumbag" as a pejorative term doesn't help...

I too think that the thread title is misleading.  The Supreme Court has said that consent to sexual contact is vitiated where one person withholds from another the fact that they have a serious and contagious disease.  The level of protection used is irrelevant to the issue at hand - it's the ability to make a fully informed choice.  I don't see why that should be controversial at all.  As for the argument that transmission is more likely to occur where the presence of HIV is unknown to both parties, so what.  If you want a guarantee of no infection then insist on a test before having sex; the criminal law won't and shouldn't intervene where your partner didn't know. But to actually withhold that kind of information clearly violates your partner's sexual autonomy.

HIV is criminalized though. Girlieboy has given some great examples of how. Border crossing is a good one, and goes for Canada as well as the USA. 

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this post. I've been writing about the HIV-related criminalization for the past 2 years, and never posted anything about it on Rabble in part because I had no idea what sort of response to expect.

There seems to be a consensus among many of the commenters here that aligns with the major problem with the criminal law approach to HIV-related criminalization. When people engage in sexual activity, responsibility lies with both people, not just one, and criminal law is not designed to address that fact.

The notion expressed once or twice above, that people cannot meaningfully consent to any sexual activity without knowing the other person's HIV status, is problematic. Many sexual activities offer zero risk for HIV transmission, or statistically incredibly improbable risk, risk that is much lower than other risks that people take all the time. It's important to remember that HIV is completely unlike TB, or indeed quite unlike most other STIs, in the fact that by comparison, it is more difficult to transmit, and it's much easier to prevent transmission. It is quite possible for people with HIV to protect their partners without consistently disclosing their HIV status.

The risks associated with safer sex are very low for the person without HIV and conversely, the risks associated with disclosure for the person with HIV can be quite high, from social ostracization to workplace discrimination. In Canada today, mistreatment fuelled by ignorance is still very common -- a poll last year indicated that somewhere around 50 percent of people would not be willing to touch a sweater that had been worn by someone living with HIV. No wonder there is a lack of open, frank discussion of how to avoid and reduce risks when it comes to the very specifics of various sexual activities. We all have a responsibility to change that, we can't just dump that responsibility onto the backs of people who know their positive HIV status.

And what about those with HIV who have had ever had unprotected sex they deeply regret? We can't hear their stories, since admitting them would make them open targets to be thrown in jail. But I think that what we'd find is that people with HIV don't cease being human beings when their HIV status changes -- they make mistakes too. It's hard to see that in light of the media and public frenzy to pose any HIV-positive person who's ever had unprotected sex as a villain bent on intentionally harming others. Believe me, no one is saying people with HIV *should* expose others to potential risk. But ramming people through the law-and-order punitive framework won't help fix things, and it has many negative implications, as girlyboy has pointed out quite well.

Here's another key point that often gets lost in these discussions. Canada is quickly becoming one of the world's most active HIV-related criminalizers -- and that's due in strong part to the fact that we criminalize not just HIV transmission but HIV "exposure", ie, allegations that unprotected sex have taken place even when no HIV was transmitted. Criminalizing HIV transmission is problematic enough because it is extremely difficult to prove which person infected the other under most circumstances (or to prove that it wasn't in fact some third person who was involved in the HIV transmission). But HIV exposure is even worse because it is absolutely impossible to prove -- which means the floodgates are open for any vindictive person to claim they had unprotected sex with someone they know to be HIV-positive. The accuser is seen as a victim and protected, and the positive person's name is splashed across the media, potentially destroying their life and reputation even if a judge eventually deems the case had no merit and tosses it out.

Anyway, thanks for listening. Here are a couple of related articles I've written on the topic:

http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Criminalizing_HIV_may_only_fuel_the_e...

http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Transcending_the_pozneg_divide-6478.a...

http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/tag/free%20agent.aspx

Good post, Daedalus, and good discussion overall. I must say I have a hard time with girlieboy's notion that "we are all responsible for our own sexual health". There are different levels of responsibility. For example, workers in hazardous occupations have to be careful all the time, but employers are considered legally liable for workplace hazards, because they have more knowledge about and control over the situation. "Criminalizing HIV" (which I agree is an inappropriate thread title) is based on a similar principle.

Daedalus: Thanks for your response. It's great you have strong opinions about the topic. The point of view you've expressed is in fact quite a common and popular one. I have to say though, with respect, that not all of your points stand up -- at least from my perspective -- to logical and factual scrutiny.

The first is the notion at that people are incapable of making informed decisions about sexual activity without knowing whether or not their sexual partner has HIV. You state this as if it were a fact, which means that it is either always true or always false. But it's impossible for this to be always true, because many people who have HIV do not know it and thus cannot disclose.

The bottom line is that all sexually active adults have a responsibility to be informed about sexual risks in general and make educated decisions about what activities they are willing to engage in with other people. HIV is not difficult to avoid -- based not on avoiding people who tell you they have HIV or having a sense of entitlement to that information, but by avoiding activities that place you at high risk for HIV transmission, regardless of any information you may or may not have about someone. People make those types of decisions all the time -- just like they have to make all other life decisions in a context of factors both known and unknown. People make those decisions not only in the context of avoiding HIV, which is comparatively difficult to get, but when it comes to all other STIs, many of which are far easier to contract and some of which can have implications as serious as HIV.

When I said "It is quite possible for people with HIV to protect their partners without consistently disclosing their HIV status," you replied "Possible? Oh sure. Lots of things are possible. But statistically, if this were probable in the population as a whole, we wouldn't be talking about this because HIV would have ceased spreading and nobody new would be catching it."

There are a several different problems with that assertion. First, it suggests that HIV transmission happens because safer sex is not effective. The opposite is true, it is highly effective. The real issue is that the vast majority of HIV transmission occurs in a context where the person with HIV does not know that they have it, and they are not practicing safer sex. And here is a related, key point -- people who know their HIV status are those who are least likely to be capable of transmitting it, not only because of their behavioural choices but because medication makes them less physically capable of transmission. This is usually rejected out of hand by the any-risk-is-an-equal-risk-no-matter-how-minuscule school of thought. But it is a very important factor. It highlights the flawed logic behind the idea that those people who know they have HIV are responsible for the sexual behaviour and decisions of everyone else, and that everyone else is not responsible for their own behaviour. This very common idea (1) is ineffective in stopping HIV transmission and (2) is ethically wrong -- because the people who are least likely to be able to transmit HIV are not responsible for everyone else's decisions and behaviour.

The argument that the quality of life of people with HIV is small potatoes compared to "THE UNDENIABLE FACT THAT AIDS KILLS!!!!!" is also a common position. That said, Unionist's twist that compares people with HIV to bosses and people without it to workers feels particularly distasteful and ironic to me. HIV is a serious condition, no one would deny that, even though most Canadians who contract HIV today can expect a normal lifespan. Again, to avoid that, people make prudent risk-reduction decisions, which don't always require knowing the other person medical details. So we are comparing apples and oranges, as the direct relationship that you posit between HIV disclosure and sexual risk is not really there.

And it's hard to know how to respond when the impact of disclosure on the lives of people with HIV is trivialized, common as that it. On the one hand, people are in fact capable of informed consent and effective self-protection without knowing someone's HIV status -- and so nothing life-changing happens to them. Conversely, when the health status of people with HIV is exposed to others, the effect can indeed be life-changing. Sometimes it means someone won't sit next to you in the lunch room -- something you are kicked out of your home, sometimes you are killed as "punishment." I gave those specific examples because they have both happened more than once recently.

HIV flourishes still, not because of dishonest reckless people with HIV, it is because transmission occurs in the context of human behaviour that in other contexts is natural and normal, and challenging to control. Sexual transmission of HIV is a public health matter not a criminal one, because except in the rarest of cases, this is not about one person doing wrong to another. Besides the fact it doesn't address reducing transmission in any way, criminalization of HIV transmission (or especially HIV "exposure") is not justice.

As for what all people could and should be doing to reduce HIV discrimination and actually usefully encourage open productive discussions around mutual sexual health instead of misguided and unjust criminalization tactics, that is a whole other discussion. One I wish more people were having, instead of putting people who know their positive HIV status in the crosshairs.

The pie analogy absolutely does not apply. Human beings are not pies that can be eaten or not eaten, and people with HIV are not poisoned pies that you only have the choice to eat or not eat -- and if you eat you will die and if you don't, you will be saved. All the analogies that get typically misapplied in these discussions -- that a person with HIV is like a car whose breaks don't work (but the car dealer didn't tell you), or a house that was built upon a swamp (a fact the shady real estate agent lied to you about) -- are not just offensive and objectifying, they don't apply to the reality of the situation. The reality is that human beings engage in a wide range of sexual activities. Many activities pose zero risk for HIV transmission. People with HIV have protected and/or low-to-no-risk sex with people without HIV every single day. Most of the time, a person without HIV having sex with a person with HIV is not in any danger whatsoever. If partners are considering higher-risk activities though, they both have a shared obligation to discuss and mitigate risks.

This is a false dichotomy, and it's one that has been put in far cruder (and far more removed-from-reality) terms by pundits like Margaret Wente and Rosie DiManno -- the "common-sense" fantasy is that people with HIV are so greedy for sexual gratification (after all, how else did they end up with the virus in the first place?) that they will endanger anyone's life to get it. But the reality is that, whether or not they exercise their ethical right to choice around disclosure, the vast majority of people who know their positive HIV status are not passing the virus on to anyone else and not exposing anyone else to any danger, either theoretically or actually. The discussion around the supposed ethics of HIV disclosure is a deadly distraction that is putting some innocent people with HIV (growing numbers of whom have in fact not transmitted anything to anyone) in jail, while stealing valuable societal energy that should be used instead to encourage more people to get tested for all STIs regularly and to drastically improve sexual education at a broader level.

I sometimes wonder the extent to which context, history and experience level contribute to people's perspective on these issues. In the gay community, there is 25 years worth of knowledge and direct experience with these questions. Many people (HIV-negative and HIV-positive) in the gay community take the view that when safer sex is performed, HIV status is not relevant. HIV-negative gay men do not on the whole demand disclosure from HIV-positive men. I cannot think of anyone I know who would describe safer sex, which gay men have been using to address HIV long before anyone else cared if they lived or died, as comparable to Russian Roulette. I think most would say the opposite, that it is life-saving and community building.

Everyone is entitled to their own views, of course.

I wasn't sure how to respond to that because I couldn't really relate -- because I don't expect people to disclose their status to me and I wouldn't reject someone who disclosed their positive status to me, and I've operated that way for a long, long time. I wouldn't expect someone who was positive who didn't disclose their status to me to feel bad or to believe I would have otherwise rejected them. I can't really speculate on how they should feel in a case like that.

I should certainly admit though that even within the gay community, there are a lot of different points of view on these questions.

It's still true. The only difference in that case is that neither person is capable of informed consent.

Sure, but that isn't 100% succesful, and not only because not everyone follows the rules, but because the rules just don't provide an answer to certain situations. The whole safe sex business was only ever designed to protect certain at-risk groups (eg college kids, young adults etc): not society as a whole. It just can't, and it was never meant to. What about a philandering husband or common law partner, a couple attempting to conceive? Can married couples not have unprotected sex without a trip to the clinic first? Your solution demands an extreme level of distrust between people that won't be realized, and probably shouldn't be. There are all kinds of "risky" behaviours - in the context of the groups that the safe sex campaigns were intended to protect - that aren't really "risky" for other groups, provided informed consent is there. Informed consent and the safe sex campaign are not at odds, in fact, they are meant to complement one another. The safe sex campaign offers absolutely no protection to millions of people.

Again, your perspective is too narrow - you've been reading alot of safe sex literature, without realizing that it's not meant to protect society as a whole, but only groups that engage in frequent casual sex (which, by the way, is the minority of sexual activity). How do couples attempting to conceive avoid activities that place them at high risk for HIV transmission if 1% of the population has suddenly decided the "informed" part of "informed consent" is just a meaningless sound preceding "consent"? Or even just monogamous couples who, thinking that their partner is safe, decide they want to enjoy sex without a condom? Without a duty to inform - at the very least, when asked - 1% of the population robs the other 99% of perfectly natural activities they could all enjoy free from any risk of HIV. Not something to be encouraged among groups like college students, but how are you supposed to discourage it among monogamous couples?

Unprotected sex will always be around - or at least, the species will only be around as long as it is. This is some hardwired baseline core human behaviour, and try as you might, it will never be controlled. People aren't going to opt out of their shot at the gene pool - some will, but it won't take but a few generations for most of the sexually cautious to be selected out. The genes themselves will ensure the majority will always be disposed to practice unprotected sex.

Oh well that makes it alright! Joe the Employee is a rather reckless driver; I the Employer therefore decide Joe doesn't need to know about the health and safety risks of this chemical I'll have him working with. I'll just tell him it's bleach and stick it in a bleach bottle; Joe will never know. And the Product, well, I see lots of people taking risks all the time: what's a little safety violation if you don't get caught eh? No more than an extra 3 or 4 deformed babies nationwide. And no, I'm not comparing HIV positive persons with manufacturers and employers: I'm comparing situations where people make risk decisions for others without their consent, which is not ethical and which a huge amount of the law is devoted to protecting people from. It's called negligence.

The point is that people make their own decisions and the expectation is that if you have life or death information about something you're encouraging them to participate in, it is to be shared. That's the "informed" part of informed consent. Nobody can have perfect knowledge of all the factors that might impact on a decision, but that doesn't excuse concealing facts about something you intend to mutually participate in. That's exploitation - for a momentary orgasm, no less, so it's quite a cheap and wholly antisocial form of exploitation.

Only in individual cases. Across the population as a whole, the safe sex campaigns has limited effect for reasons I have already pointed out.

No, thats a different issue altogether. We're talking about situations where people know they are infected and choose not to tell their sexual partners. You're ducking back into the general issue of AIDS for cover, trying to lose sight of the particular and specific situation we're discussing, which is whether or not infected persons have the right to expose the unwitting to the virus for sexual pleasure.

The flawed logic I see is that 99% of the population must be bereft of the protections of informed consent because it is sexually inconvenient for 1% to extend that courtesy to them, and the latter group isn't responsible for knowingly exposing and even infecting others to the virus without their consent. And, if the 99% want to protect themselves from the 1%, they must change baseline, core human behaviours that nothing in the history of our species has ever been able to change and in fact that our species depends upon to reproduce and survive. If it weren't for unprotected sex, you wouldn't exist. And if it weren't for unplanned pregnancies, you might not exist either - I know I wouldn't.

If you knowingly bring something dangerous to a person without their consent - and they can't give their consent to that risk if they don't know about it - you are responsible, and should face consequences for your actions.

Not always, but they do sometimes - and why should 1% mandate that the other 99% can only safely practice sex in certain ways, just because they can't be bothered with telling intimate partners about health risks they are exposing them to?

Lots of people catch HIV from others who have HIV and know it. You can fiddle about with the percentages, but it's still thousands. Something life changing happened to them. The situation you describe is common, but hardly universal.

And no, nobody is capable of "informed" consent without being informed of the risks. That's just consent - not informed consent, and not consent at all towards the risks. Words have meanings, they are not just there to fill out a phrase and make it sound catchy. The "informed" part actually does mean something.

First of all, all that would apply to the person who becomes infected as well - they become HIV positive too!

Second of all, I imagine it is likely that none of your examples are from Canada, in which case they are irrelevant. We aren't talking about policy in Arkansas or Mozambique or Rumania.

Well, not entirely or in the majority. But it does proliferate to some degree because of dishonest reckless people with HIV. And that's specifically what we're discussing. It's not even necessarily about some sort of solution to the spread of the disease. It's about negligence and responsibility. We charge people with all sorts of crimes that are rare and unusual, not to deal with a social crisis but to correct the individual's behaviour. We might imprison an infanticidal mother even though she has entered menopause and can have no more children, so it's not even entirely about preventing recidivism - it's about showing society's disapproval and bringing the offender to recognize their responsibilities and realize what they did is wrong.

Challenging? The word you're looking for is "impossible". That isn't entirely the solution. We can only hope to encourage certain practices in certain contexts .. it is not an answer for people who choose to

But it's those rarest of cases we're discussing.

In Canadian society, for the most part (except maybe in Alberta and a few rural parts here and there) people are well-informed about AIDS and HIV and aren't "out to get them" ... quite the opposite I think, there is alot of sympathy in most normal company in this country. But it doesn't extend to allowing people to expose unknowing others to viruses for the sake of brief sexual pleasure!

I don't know if I agree that if you have the knowledge that to not inform should or shouldn't be legally written, I would have to take it as a case by case basis myself.

Having said that I agree that the comment tha without that duty it robs others of perfectly natural activities they could enjoy risk free is untrue and inflammatory. My ex husband got tested and disclosed the results to me - and I believed him because I knew he was serious about me and would never put me in danger. My ex boyfriend actually took me to the doctor so I could hear it straight from the doctor that he was free of any STD that could be tested for. The only person who is getting robbed is the person who robs themselves because they don't insist.

Again, if someone were to lie I might have problems with their actions but that doesn't take away the persons ability to ask or talk directly to the doctor if they need that information to fully consent. It doesn't even have to be offensive - you just say it's not that I think you would lie but I want to protect myself from someone who might so I always find out right from the doctor.

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From 18:00 - 21:00 pm
Sutton Place Hotel, 955 Bay Street (Stop 33)

A presentation will follow, featuring:
·        The film producer, Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, also Director of the Centre for the Study of Adolescence in Nairobi (Kenya), and
·        Kennedy Odhiambo Otina, Coordinator for the Men for Gender Equality Now, a programme based at the African Women's Development and Communication Network - FEMNET.

To R.S.V.P or to get more information, please contact Johanne Fillion at jfillion@acpd.ca.

I wrote a video commentary for RabbleTV on this topic earlier this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pf60E3n2IM

http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/01/12/Sex-With-HIV/

Sex Without HIV Disclosure: Should It Remain a Crime?

Why the Supreme Court is about to hear public health experts say it's time to soften the law. A special report