The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission

Response to Ravaids on the About HIV/AIDS forum. Ravaids said:

"I would put the bastard in jail after charging him with attempted murder. If any of his victims die then he should serve life, if not execution."

The antibody tests cannot prove HIV infection, this is an absolute fact.

The criteria for branding someone positive is arbitrary, this is an absolute fact.

In England and Wales two positive ELISA tests constitute HIV positivity, the confirmatory Western blot (considered by all scientists outside England and Wales to be more specific than the ELISA) is not used. The criteria for a positve confirmatory Western blot also vary considerably from country to country.

HIV positive people have the same basic emotional needs for love and affection as HIV negatives but because of the enormous stigma associated with HIV, as a consequence of the sexual terrorism you and the establishment promote, they are in a state of alienation. To criminalise an act of love is perverse. The law you support is dehumanising. The HIV/AIDS construct is dehumanising and its flaws are so fundamental even a grade 7 science student could spot some of them. Those HIV positives who engage in "unprotected" sex without disclosing their status are not "bastards" they are subject to enormous emotional conflict. Yes they are violating informed consent but only as a result of having their own informed consent violated when they consented to be tested. The probability of "HIV transmission" from a single act of unprotected sex is very low anyway. Test positive on a non-specific antibody test and you are no longer a human you are a three-letter, fatal disease vector.

Even from a non-dissident perspective this law is wrong:

Why should ignorance of serostatus be a defence against the transmission of HIV when people CHOOSE to be ignorant of their "status" by not testing? Why should the legal reponsibility be imposed solely upon HIV positives who as a reward for being responsible enough to get tested are subject to enormous stigma and forfeiture of fundamental rights? The criminalisation of HIV transmission discourages people from testing and maximises the spread of "HIV".

And another thing, people are told by the establishment to which they defer that unprotected casual sex risks HIV infection, if they choose to accept this risk they are not then justified in blaming someone else if they happen to become "infected", even if they had unprotected sex with someone who knew they were positive but did not mention it.

I feel I should clarify my position on this. I don't approve of the violation of informed consent whether by the establishment or dissidents so, even though I am 100% convinced that HIV is harmless, I am still of the opinion that HIV positives should disclose their "status" before having unprotected sex. Because I appreciate the human factors involved I can understand why sometimes this does not happen. Calling people "bastards" and criminalising the transmission of HIV only makes a bad, heavily stigmatised, situation worse.

Those "bastards" who are convinced they have a deadly virus and therefore try their best to transmit it through sex (with presumably as many people as possible) simply because they happen to be "evil" exist primarily in the minds of people like Ravaids and tabloid newspaper editors.