So, here we go again...

[lpetersson]

Asylum seeker gave a bunch of women AIDS
Apologies for linking to The Daily Mail...

I seem to recall that earlier this year or maybe late last year there was a lot of robust and frank exchanges of opinion (Especially on kirsten2's LJ I think?) about a woman who had given one or more men AIDS on purpose.
I can't help but wonder if the same people who defended that womans right to do so would also defend this chaps right to spread this disease...

Oh well...

Comments

[nibber.livejournal.com]

How can anyone knowingly giving someone else aids be defended, ever?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

If I sneeze on you and give you a cold, is that Actual Bodily Harm? What about if you catch pneumonia, or TB?

If a drug addict shares a needle with someone and gets HIV, or hepatitis, who is to blame - the addict, or the person they share with?

Unprotected sex is stupid regardless of whether the HIV status of the partner is known. Anyone who has unprotected sex is playing Russian roulette with their health, and their health of their present and future partners.

[feuermaus.livejournal.com]

Exactly! The women should have been taking care of themselves as much as him by using condoms! Anyone who has unprotected sex before having a full and comprehensive GUM check in this day and age is a f*ing moron as far as I'm concerned.

And trust the Daily Mail to push the 'asylum seeker' bit. It's all just part of their plan to smear 'illegal' immigrants (although there is no such thing as an 'illegal' immigrant!)

[nibber.livejournal.com]

thats mostly true but has nothing to do with my statement...

[kirstenlj.livejournal.com]

No-one defended her right to knowingly infect anyone else with HIV afair.

I said at the time:
1. I don't believe criminal prosecution/custodial sentences are always the right way to deal with people who are diagnosed with HIV and then transmit it.
2. If you don't take all precautions to protect yourself, I don't think you should have any legal recourse if your gamble doesn't work out for you. That isn't to say that having unprotected sex when you know you have HIV isn't wrong. Just that people who take the risk need to be willing to accept either outcome. If people, they mustn't take the risk and then expect everyone else to pick up the pieces.
3. More should be done to counsel and monitor people who are newly diagnosed.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

There is absolutely nothing in that article to indicate that he knew he was HIV+ at the time he had sex with those women.

Yes, as a responsible adult he should be tested regularly, particularly if he's having unprotected sex. But frankly the health service isn't equipped to test everyone, and I'm not sure I'd like to live in a country where any medical procedure, be it a blood test, an operation or a vaccination, was a condition of citizenship.

[nibber.livejournal.com]

responsible adults don't have unprotected sex.

I'd be happy to have a blood test, or any health test to be granted citizenship. You have to comply with mumerus other conditions to be a citizen of nearly any country so why not a health test?

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

so why not a health test

I of course agree completely with you on this...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

responsible adults don't have unprotected sex.

Unless they're trying to conceive.

[the-elephant.livejournal.com]

I don't think that fits under quite the same definition.

[zenmeisterin.livejournal.com]

Uh... a right to knowingly spread AIDS to unwitting victims?

Excuse me but f*ck off, whatever gender anyone is. I don't see the blindest bit of difference if it's a woman or a man deliberately infecting women or men.

Right to knowingly condemn others to a horrific death, my arse. NO-ONE should have that right. Including governments but that's another rant.

[/rant]

[kirstenlj.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was on my journal.

I don't think anyone has a 'right' to spread HIV; I don't think rights come into it at all. In that particular case, I didn't think that the criminal courts were the most constructive way of dealing with her. Prosecuting the very few people who do this clearly doesn't stop it happening and there needs to be more research into why it happens at all.

When you have sex with a stranger without taking basic protections to protect yourself, then you are taking full responsibility for contracting HIV. If each women had demanded he have an HIV test, used condoms for 6 months, then demanded another HIV test and only then had unprotected sex only to find out he had somehow forged the test results, I may feel as if he was entirely to blame. They valued the excitement of shagging a big black man from Africa more than their lives and that's what they got.