[ Do you think people with hiv/aids should disclose their status? ]
Hell NO!
[ The risk is an interesting thing with the intentional spread of disease. If someone wants to infect as many people as they can they are not going to be honest with a partner. You take risk, but that risk can be limited if your partner is honest with you. I don't like this idea that the victims are to blame when infected by someone deliberately spreading diseases
I don't believe that blame ever applies to the spread of disease. Microbes do what microbes do. We can't control them.
All we can do is lower our risk by taking reasonable precautions. Testing, barriers, possibly abstinence.
It's like getting in the car. You always have the possibility of being in an accident. There's no way to remove that risk entirely. All you can do is things to lower your risk. Drive defensively. Or to mitigate the damage if you are unlucky enough to get in an accident. Wear your seatbelt, have airbags, etc.
Nobody is at fault when the virus is contracted, no more so than someone is at fault when pregnancy occur. Exposure to HIV doesn't guarantee contraction of the virus anymore than exposure to cold germs mean you will get a cold, or exposure to sperm means you will get pregnant. It is certainly a risk, but it is not a guarantee. Viruses do what they do, and immune systems do what they do. To assign fault seems strange to me.
[ OK, what if someone who knowingly has HIV rapes a woman
Should his sentence be harsher because he also gave her HIV?What if a woman got back from the dr and he told her she has HIV. She had been cheating on her husband with several men while she was away on business and could have contracted them from any one of them. She goes home and does not disclose this information to her husband and has sex with him. He now has HIV. Should she be charged with assault for knowingly giving him HIV? Or should he always wear a condom when Having sex with his wife who he, as far as he knows, is loving and faithful?A man and a woman have been dating for several years, but never had sex. The woman is a virgin. They have sex for the first time on their wedding night. Her now husband reveals to her the next day that he has HIV and has had it from before they started dating. Should he be charged with assault?A couple have been dating and have been engaging in protected sex for several months. They jointly decide to stop using barrier protections. One of them agrees to this while knowing that they have HIV. The second person contracts HIV shortly after. Should the partner be charged with assault? ]
Yoshi, in each of your hypotheticals, I would not support charging with the crime of transmission of HIV. Each of those cases of consentual sex with a non disclosing partner is extremely unfortunate, and the person has every reason to be furious with their partner, but I don't see it as criminal.
The onus is on non-infected people to know their partners before sleeping with them and practicing safe sex or to accept the consequences. I'm okay with that.
Here's the thing. With regard to every other virus, we put the onus on the individiual for self-protection. We tell people not to touch their eyes, nose, and mouth. To wash their hands, to wear gloves when working with the sick. We don't require disclosure of a viral infection before interaction with another person. We make requests that people stay home, cover thier noses and mouths when they cough/sneeze, and avoid contact with the old, young, or immunocompromised when they are sick, but we don't prosecute them when they don't follow those requests. What makes HIV so special? What makes the act of having sex any different than going to work with the flu? Neither act is a guarantee of transmission of the virus.
[ Knowingly spreading the disease can kill people and cause huge financial burden to not just the infected but to the whole society. ]
Having intercourse with a person while HIV+ isn't knowingly spreading the disease. It's knowingly risking spreading the disease, but exposure to the virus is not a guarantee of contraction of the virus.
[She could have demanded that he be tested before engaging in unprotected sex with someone from a high risk group. He had never been tested, but we can argue that he had an obligation to get tested knowing he was a drug user sharing needles]
Obligation to get himself tested? What kind of obligation, a legal one? A moral one? A personal well-being one?
I'd argue that we all have the right to live in ignorance of our own disease.
And until the stigma of being HIV+ is erased, I'd argue that I understand exactly why people would chose not to know.
Again, I don't like fault or blame language with regard to viruses and bacteria.
It's not anybody's fault you contract HIV, ever. Unless, I suppose, someone injects the virus directly and intentionally into your blood stream.
But as I've repeatedly said, exposure to the virus doesn't equal contraction of the virus. Sex has risks. It just does. One of those risks is disease.(and lest I be cast as a total prude who is afraid of sex and is all pro-absinence and all that shit, I'm not. I had my fun in my single days. I knew the risks I took to have it, too. And I knew what I needed to do to lower those risk to a level where I felt the reward outweighed the risk)
I'd argue you can't intentionally spread a virus. You can only intentionally expose someone to a virus