Law harming HIV prevention
A hardline criminal prosecution response to HIV transmission is hampering prevention efforts, according to a peak national HIV advocacy organisation.
The National Association of People Living With AIDS (NAPWA) has released a monograph calling for nationally consistent laws and a move away from prosecuting people who may have transmitted HIV to another person or exposed another person to the virus.
The monograph – Criminalisation of HIV Transmission in Australia: Legality, Morality, and Reality – is being launched in Parliament House, Canberra tomorrow by Parliamentary Liaison Group for HIV/AIDS chair, Senator Louise Pratt and includes a foreword by former High Court justice Michael Kirby.
NAWPA president Robert Mitchell told Sydney Star Observer a sharp rise in legal action is frustrating HIV prevention attempts and should be used only as a last resort.
“A major problem in Australia is we’re dealing with different jurisdictions, and criminal prosecution is totally removed from any sort of public health discourse,” Mitchell said.
“We believe in the first instance these people should be supported and counselled to try and help them change their behaviours – criminal sanctions will not change people’s behaviours.”
There have been 22 known criminal cases for HIV transmission/exposure since 1993, 12 of which have gone through Victorian courts.
Almost half of the total number of prosecutions have occurred in the last three years.
In 2008 alone, six cases appeared before courts across the country, with four in Victoria, including the highly publicised Michael Neal case.
Mitchell said state-based HIV support groups have expressed concern that highly publicised court cases are having negative flow-on effects for people living with HIV.
“The main concern for us is the stigma of discrimination that this engenders for HIV positive people, in [making] them feel they’re being seen as perpetrators and guilty,” Mitchell said.
“It impacts at a personal level… people get fearful knowing their status because they fear it may be used against them in future prosecution.
“They’d rather not know their status and that’s a very bad outcome because it means people do not know their HIV status or are not being tested for HIV which drives down testing rates.”
Concern has also been raised that a ‘moral panic’ is at play, with other blood-borne diseases, such as hepatitis, not attracting the same court action.
Monograph co- editor and NAPWA deputy director Dr John Rule said the trend towards HIV criminalisation is exactly opposite to the way HIV transmission has been handled in the past.
“Why are these [legal] cases occurring now when we have a set of guidelines for the management of someone with HIV who place others at risk? That’s what we’re asking.
“Other [monograph] writers have raised the possibility that the criminal transmissions and the prosecutions may, in fact, be a way of trying to manage a public perception.
“It could undermine, in the long run, prevention efforts,” he said.
There have also been a number of heterosexual men prosecuted under these laws for having unprotected sex with multiple women despite knowing they were HIV positive- including this one where the man put an AIDS denialist in the witness box after he infected a mother of two: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21631724-1702,00.html
Peter…” The Neal case was political aimed at hiv boys and the gay community at large ”
Your comments are completely crazy… Neal was found guilty of attempting to infect others with hiv on numereous occasions including hosting breeding parties where there were continuing attempts to infect hiv negative ( mainly young guys)with hiv. shame on you and your comment!
I repeat..there are individuals in our community who could not give a flying fuck if they infect others….including people like neal and his admirers who actively attempt to “breed” others with the virus.
The medical profession controls and monitors gay behavior with a compliant gay hierarchy. It is funded by government as long as Universities and pharmaceutical companies continue to canvas and monitor gay private consensual sexual activity with the emphasis on HIV transmission. If the paradigm is continually one of dis-ease then the result will be dysfunctional and dis-eased. I would suggest that paradigm has lost its potency. The ‘law and order’ approach to transmission prevention is worthy of the MacCartheist show trials that preached fear, humiliation and subjugation of the individual to the state, with lives being ruined. Young gay men on the other hand may be less interested in being so compliant with their private life. What you may call drug addled reckless behavior may in fact be a dawning recognition that no government, no doctor ,no health dept., no law enforcement agency has any business constantly monitoring and violating the human rights of a minority group. Yet this nexus between the medical establishment and law enforcement is an ‘old friend’ of many senior gays who had their lives ruined by such a compact. This obsession and pathologizing of one facet of being gay appears to color all government policy. You don’t have to be a statistician to realize tabloid headlines such as ‘HIV rates soar among young gays’ (The Age October 11, 2009) are Ludicrous! Okay, so what are the figures? ‘….Two years ago, 43 new cases in the 20-29 age group were diagnosed. Last year it was 56.’ Shock horror?! And this is in a population of 20million Australians????? This is hardly a pandemic and just maybe it begs the question of why so much hype is being spent to fuel such headlines and why it is worthy of criminal prosecution? Smell a rat? Sure do. ‘We can’t get the queers for having gay sex no more, but we can get the poz ones instead.’ You join the dots. Our medical ‘friends’ and police we love to march with in parades are at it again!
What other community has to put up with this nanny state interference in its private personal life? The ‘concern?’ over new infections is laudable the obsession is not!
The Neal case was political aimed at hiv boys and the gay community at large.
Christian…i have no fear of having sex with hiv positive people…my late partner was hiv positive for 10 years before he died suddenly from an aids related lymphoma.
there are plenty of young , depressed , drunk or drug fucked individuals who for whatever reason are not always safe sex compliant ….the burden of responsibility should be on us all to protect these individuals..if you are hiv positive you have an added responsibility as you have the ability to infect your partner with a potentially deadly virus.
Christian you are talking naive politically correct bullshit
the same bullshit which supports the entrenched culture of bareback sex in our community…and yes there are individuals in our community who could not give a flying fuck if they infect others.
I totally blame the “socialist crack-pot” Kevin Rudd for causing all this brutal mess against gays and people who are HIV positive!!!!
To Chris,
The fear and hate in your comment is the same as those who bash us.
To say this is pure and simple is shortsighted. Someone who knows they are HIV+ can’t have sex with you without your consent- otherwise it’s rape and a completely other criminal matter (Rape, by the way, happens more commonly amongst heterosexuals- you don’t see the same amount of media attention on that do you? I think that’s the point of this article).
HIV transmission occurs at the level that it does because people do not act responsibly, not because HIV+ people are actively seeking to infect hapless victims. If you choose to have unsafe sex, the consequences are your own. I’m HIV- and plan to stay that way. And I’m not afraid to have sex with someone who is HIV+ because I know I can keep myself safe.
There’s enough fear and hate of us out there already. We don’t need anymore, thank you.
What a lot of politically correct bullshit! If you are hiv positive and have unprotected anal or vaginal sex you have the ability to potentially kill…pure and simple !