Dutch vampires & the criminalization of HIV_dr. dean adell circumcision and aids prevention

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Dutch vampires & the criminalization of HIV

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ickaprick 2008-11-30 03:37:53 Publish:

A friend who also blogs emailed to ask what I thought of the Dutch vampire case. The what?? It's her shorthand for the recent case in the Netherlands in which two men were found guilty of inviting guys over the internet to attend sex parties where they'd drug them with GHB. Once unconscious, one of them, a nurse, injected the men with the HIV+ blood of the other man. In all, fourteen men at the parties tested positive, though the judge acknowledged there was no way to prove it was due to the injections since all fourteen men had unprotected sex at the party beforehand.

Sensational much?

In Canada, it feels like we're moving toward greater criminalization of HIV transmission along with recent high profile examples in places like the UK and Indonesia. The Dutch vampires are just the latest, albeit more extreme, example.

It's frustrating because, of course, it's legit that this story be reported on. This appears to be a pretty clear case of willful intent to cause harm. But the media is structured to report on exceptions to the norm, not the norm itself. Which is fine if the general population knows the facts about what the norm *is*. And evidence shows over and over that the majority of poz folks who know their status go out of their way to protect their partners. Not all, obviously, but it's certainly the norm. The problem is: I don't think the population knows this (or believes it at any rate), so when the media reports on high drama exceptions, I think the public perceives the exception to be the norm itself.

That creates an awful lot of stigma for the non-vampiric poz crowd (read: almost everyone!) and, once again, deflects attention away from the fact that 50-70% of new cases of HIV transmitted through sex are attributable to people who don't know their status - not people who have been tested, discovered they're positive and taken steps to make sure HIV ends with them. Nut-case vampires with syringes are about as common as Jeffrey Dahmers with freezers or Robert Picktons with pig farms. They're extreme and deplorable cases - but they're notable because they are so out of the ordinary.

In Canada, there are no federal laws about HIV transmission - just case-by-case precedents set in court. And with an Ontario judge ordering an HIV+ man to wear a face mask in the court room just this year, how fair a trial do you think people are getting? So folks are being found guilty of things like aggravated assault. We've even had people convicted of "administering noxious substances", which is poisoning people essentially.

Because it hasn't been codified anywhere, there's a lot of uncertainty for the poz folks I work with about when they do and don't have to disclose. And with that much grey area, people tend to err on the safe side thinking they'd rather be overly cautious than go to jail. Of course, that takes the decision about disclosure and the strategy of disclosing when it is safe to do so out of their hands.

Criminalization increases stigma while reducing the number of people getting tested. Why go for a test if knowing you're positive could then land you in jail? And when 50-70% of sexual HIV transmission among Ontario gay men results from the 30% of gay poz guys who don't know their status, we can't afford to make more reasons not to get tested.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network created 5 fact sheets on the criminalization of HIV exposure in Canada and whether this is the right path to be headed down. I'm curious whether Canadians really think that poz people in prison is the best we can do. Yahoo: aids prevention Dutch vampires & the criminalization of HIV dr. dean adell circumcision and aids prevention
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