Talk:Criminal transmission of HIV

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2019 and 5 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AlyssaMeredith.

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Dubious info in Introduction
Is there any basis for this statement?:

"Several other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have been known to medical science for centuries, but there was little incentive to criminalize their transmission for two practical reasons:

many societies were reluctant to discuss matters of sex, let alone enact legislation to control sexual activity; and unlike HIV (and subsequent AIDS), these other STDs are not fatal."

Societies have legislated against all kinds of sexual activity long before the 21st century, even if sexuality generally was not openly discussed.

Also, there are other STDs that are/were fatal, especially before the discovery of antibiotics.

I propose to delete this passage.

Toby32225 (talk) 19:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

UK
if this law applies in the UK how is it that Dica 2005 was not charged with these offences but a s20 offence? i believe he should have been charged with attempted murder

I think it's down to the fact that this page was originally developed over a US law rather than an english and welsh.


 * None of the people convicted in the UK have been charged with deliberate infection, but rather reckless infection - the courts have decided that being aware of their infection (or possibility of infection, in one case) they took an unreasonable risk. (See the page on recklessness.)


 * In practice, as long as most HIV- people expect disclosure but would react to it by running away screaming, many HIV+ people will not disclose, at least at first. Personally, I can see why, but it seems not everyone can and unfortunately some of them serve as judges or on juries. Lovingboth 13:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Notability
FYI on the Talk:List_of_HIV-positive_people, we discussed whether every person convicted is notable. This point was made: "Criminal transmission cases used to be unusual but over the last year or two they've become commonplace - there seems to be a new one in the news almost every week (for some examples, see Criminal transmission of HIV, this table and the list in this article). With this in mind, I'd question the notability of Carl Leone. It appears that the only unusual feature of his case is the number of charges involved. Trezatium 07:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)"

I do want to note that the Canadian cases do seem two years out of date. Canuckle 22:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

this table that you mention is gone by now. Any new one that you know of? Zezen (talk) 10:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Sparse on US legal info
Some kind of link or reference to more information on legal status in the US would certainly be useful. Omgoleus 03:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * ✅ I added some info about the criminal transmission laws in the U.S... Sweetfornow (talk) 11:48, 24 July 2010 (UTC)


 * the verbatim cut and past job from the Criminal transmission of HIV (United States) wikisite is uncalled for, though...The link to the main article is enough, in my opinion.--Wuerzele (talk) 06:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Australia
It's not correct to say that disclosure of status is required in all states. AFAIK only NSW has a specific requirement to disclose. Victoria certainly does not, and most legal opinion there is that disclosure is not required by law. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.148.172.78 (talk) 14:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Romania
The new penal code (2009) criminalizes transmission of aids (not hiv) source here http://www.avocatnet.ro/UserFiles/articleFiles/noul-cod-penal-2009-text-integral.html

Art. 354. - (1) Transmiterea, prin orice mijloace, a sindromului imunodeficitar dobândit - SIDA - de către o persoană care stie că suferă de această boală se pedepseste cu închisoarea de la 3 la 10 ani. (2) Transmiterea, prin orice mijloace, a sindromului imunodeficitar dobândit - SIDA - de către o altă persoană decât cea prevăzută în alin. (1) se pedepseste cu închisoarea de la 5 la 12 ani. (3) Dacă prin faptele prevăzute în alin. (1) si alin. (2) s-a produs moartea victimei, pedeapsa este închisoarea de la 7 la 15 ani. (4) Când fapta prevăzută în alin. (2) a fost săvârsită din culpă, pedeapsa este închisoarea de la 6 luni la 3 ani, iar dacă a cauzat moartea victimei, pedeapsa este închisoarea de la 2 la 7 ani. (5) Tentativa la infractiunile prevăzute în alin. (1) si alin. (2) se pedepseste.

Art. 354. - (1) Transmission of aids, through any means, from a person that knows has it is punishable by prison 3-10y. (2) Transmission of aids, through any means, by another person than the ones at par 1 is punishable by prison 5-12y. (3) If crimes at par 1 and 2 result in death of victim, punishment is prison 7-15y. (4) If crime at par 2 is committed without intent, punishment is 6mo-3y, if victim dies, punishment is 2-7y. (5) Attempt to commit crimes at par 1 and 2 is punishable.

No actual prosecutions have occurred (none have reached the papers).

Human Rights Watch requests HIV transmission be decriminalized link here http://www.hrw.org/en/node/11272/section/4 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.35.137.110 (talk) 22:45, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

sloppy wikipedia article
The article reads like an advocacy stint, or a newspaper article at best. I came here to look for a definition of criminal transmission of HIV, but found none, neither in Criminal transmission of HIV in the United States. I will put up a flag for neutrality and clean up. you can see from my editing history, that I am not against this article. Please do not remove the flags until there is a definition and a rigorous discussion.--Wuerzele (talk) 00:51, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The lack of a clear definition is not a neutrality issue. You don't say what you mean by 'advocacy stint'. Advocating what? Paul B (talk) 16:28, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * In what way does this article resemble an 'advocacy stint'? What viewpoint does the article appear to be advocating? Jarble (talk) 15:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC) Jarble (talk) 15:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping I had unlisted the site, something that non pinging user Paul B probably cant imagine? I still think the article is far from decent. the article has had a clear underlying bent towards decriminalization, peppered with advocacy sources for UK and US. the refs "for teh other side" so to speak were either non-existent or mere raw law links to law. It is still not fleshed out. And the discussion here is, well you can see, non existing. I am not against this article spent hours on basic clean up today, to prove that I am not against decriminalization, not even adding material!  Thanks for your 2 contributions in March 2014.--Wuerzele (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

A valid argument. I updated the laws against conscious HIV infection for Poland, and gave breakdown of cases Please do the same for other countries. Zezen (talk) 09:59, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Please explain why "Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission"

is not a good enough definition. Zezen (talk) 00:39, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Zezen, I suppose this post addresses me. please ping an editor if you dont get a reply from them.(see above) I'm glad  you seem to have seen  my issue with the article. Thanks for adding Poland in a succinct form and your other contribs until Sept 2014. more work would be good. the definition in the lead is good, but unsourced, the major issue I criticized half a year ago.--Wuerzele (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Political correctness needs reworking
Just a quick peek before my work today. Because the PC section vs epidemiological risks was removed (see also the previous deletion of a similar attempt) with a note that more direct sources are needed - can one check out this direct ref to research/update further? : The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology With Political Correctness: This work includes a foreword by Jeffrey Koplan, Vice President, Academic Health Affairs, Emory University, Atlanta, Formerly Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This groundbreaking new book blows apart the myths about who is at risk of getting AIDS and shows how these myths are driven by moral and political pressures. It provides an objective, logical, clear, epidemiologically based analysis on the current situation and situates itself firmly at marked variance with the politically correct position of UNAIDS and most AIDS activists. "The AIDS Pandemic" argues that the story of HIV has been distorted by UNAIDS and AIDS activists in order to support the myth of the high potential risk of HIV epidemics spreading into the general population. In the past, most policy makers and members of the public have uncritically accepted UNAIDS' high prevalence estimates and projections when in fact lower HIV prevalence estimates are more accurate. Time, money and resources are being wasted worldwide. Zezen (talk) 06:35, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * A response to the book from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS states "UNAIDS wishes to correct multiple mischaracterizations that appear in a book published by Radcliffe Publishing, entitled The AIDS Pandemic: the collision of epidemiology with political correctness by James Chin. These errors deal with the process and results of the estimations of the AIDS pandemic, made with technical assistance from the UNAIDS Secretariat and WHO." and "The underlining theme of Dr Chin’s book is incorrect." Dougweller (talk) 08:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * On another tack, you've mentioned nothing about criminal transmission of HIV - any source you use has to discuss this. Dougweller (talk) 21:07, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that removal of the section was entirely warranted following the discussion at the RS noticeboard. Essentially this is WP:SYN. Two isolated cases are made into an "issue" which is not supported by the sources given. Rather sources were clearly being sought out to justify the claim that "political correctness" is somehow impeding attempts to identify persons with HIV. Part of the problem is that "political correctness" is just a term people use to ridicule certain types of objections to their ideas. Let's say someone argued that all Poles should be compulsorily tested for HIV. Would objections to that be "political correctness"? After all it's a sure-fire way of identifying the carriers of the virus, so objectors could be 'endangering to public health'. What if someone proposed that all visitors to the country - tourists, business travellers, diplomats even - should be forced to have HIV tests before being allowed in? Would it be "political correctness" to oppose that? There is always legitimate debate about how far human freedoms and rights can reasonably be curtailed for reasons of public safety (as the story of Typhoid Mary, who I mentioned before, indicates. She was eventually forcibly detained, which she considered to be an outrage). Having said that, there are clearly cases in which the PC buzz-term is used, as in the recent Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, though you will notice that the article on that subject does not use the term, but rather makes more meaningful and specific points about issues. Paul B (talk) 00:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Legal section, PC part: Trying to arrive at consensus
Good. We are getting somewhere. Let us show the opposing sides in the article, to arrive at NPOV, hopefully. I have heavily reedited the PC section, trimming down on the quotes and adding this gentleman's work as a source. Please carefully review the claims against the sources, challenge them or the sources, if needed. Please also add the opposing (UNAIDS etc.) claims. As I wrote before, please do not remove these RS sources themselves, as it is NPOV in my opinion.

Zezen's proposal for: Legal, political and social problems
The initial stages of HIV infection are asymptomatic for periods usually exceeding one year. A person who engages in sexual activity or donates blood during this time may therefore have no reasonable basis upon which to suspect that he or she is transmitting a virus.

Studies have found that the presence of stigma and racial stereotypes surrounding HIV often leads individuals who have been diagnosed with HIV to ignore this knowledge and continue their previous lifestyles which may lead to faster progression of disease among themselves and their partners

This obtains especially for non-White people age cohorts, for whom AIDS has become the leading cause of death in some countries, and for whom the proportion of AIDS cases has been steadily increasing This pattern is repeated in many countries, as evidenced by WHO studies.

Consequently, Chin, a CDC specialist, claims in his book The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness the risk of spreading AIDS to the general population is a myth and an exaggeration perpetuated by UNAIDS, AIDS program advocates, and activists because the motivation of these organizations is partly to avoid further stigmatization of persons with the highest levels of HIV-risk behaviors and that their estimates for spread of the disease worldwide were thus too high.

Some scientists concur that political correctness is a contributing factor in not being able to contain the AIDS epidemic as data is not aggregated by ethnicity or race due to the political sensitivity, to avoid stigmatization of such groups.

Instead, Chin argues, the resoures should be focused on persons with the highest HIV-risk behaviors, even if this means stigmatizing them.

Chin also claims that heterosexual AIDS epidemic is sustained in sub-Saharan Africa because of the high sex partner exchange rate within a large open network, while outside sub-Saharan Africa such heterosexual epidemics do not occur, because while sexually active persons have many different sex partners over a lifetime, only one at a time for months or years. According to Chin, his models and predictions have been borne out by statistics, despite the previous warnings by such organizations as UNAIDS of world-wide spread of AIDS.

Another epidemiological risk happens when authorities fail to take the necessary steps to apprehend HIV-infected people for political correctness, that is fear of perpetuating racial stigma, or if, as has happened in at least one case, HIV-positive individuals have strategically used accusations of racism to become able to spread the disease and to try to avoid apprehension. For example, in the case of Black Cameroonian Simon Mol, who became "a darling of Poland’s liberal press" due to his political campaigns, so ome of his victims were reportedly intimidated and threatened when reporting him to police and Polish police delayed his arrest for long because of his political connections, thus allowing him to infect new victims. Finally, against these political pressures, that is despite the concerns voiced by UNHCR, in April 2007, on the heels of his case, mandatory HIV testing of asylum seekers was fully introduced in Poland.

Another example is the first case of criminal HIV infection in Finland, when a photo of of Steven Thomas a Black US citizen from New York, was published in newspapers, many Finnish politicians were worried about political ramifications of this public health prevention act, that is of labelling foreigners or Black people as suspicious. Zezen (talk) 21:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

End of proposal
The biggest problem I see is that almost none of that has to do with the article topic. It only has a single paragraph that mentions "Criminal transmission of HIV". Why should we include this?__ E L A Q U E A T E  22:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

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Foundations II 2020 Group 4 Proposed edits
-Add various citations throughout article -elaborate Netherlands, Poland, Russia sections 07282020Aecutuli (talk) 21:16, 28 July 2020 (UTC)