Okay, make it tuberculosis or shingles then.
Obviously this is a problem where two people are involved without witnesses (I have trouble visualizing a scene in a bar where someone bellows out “I’m HIV-positive - still wanna screw?”). But as mentioned, there’ve been instance(s) where people have placed many, many partners at risk of fatal illness without informing them of their HIV-positive status, and in such cases it would be “he said, they said otherwise”.
billfish, meet real world, where you don’t necessarily get to know all the ins and outs of the risks you take. Sex is not a legal contract. There are no disclosure laws. I would think that if this were a viable paradigm, it would already be in place for STDS, especially uncurable ones like herpes. And it’s not.
Amazingly enough, they do! Sometimes they get laid by people who know that they’re HIV+ and take precautions to at least reduce the risk of seroconversion. Not everyone thinks they should be tattooed on their buttocks with a scarlet HIV.
Do you know the really safe way to avoid having sex with HIV+ people if you feel that way? Get to know your partner before you go to bed with them. Only sleep with people you trust. And if you’re so paranoid about people’s HIV status that you can’t FIND anyone that you trust enough to sleep with without the law standing behind you with a big stick, then I’d say your lack of sex is your own fault.
What’s next, having everyone tested by the government and requiring an exchange of medical findings before sleeping together? I can’t really believe I’m the libertarian in this thread, but TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN HEALTH! Geez…
There are plenty of prohibited activities that take place in the context of just-two-principals around. You’d be surprised at how few rapes are committed in front of a nun, a famous surgeon, and a Supreme Court justice, for example.
Like any other crime, it’s up to the prosecution to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, each and every element of the crime. In a single case, where the only evidence is he-said-she-said (or, as you say, he-said-he-said) while the evidence would be legally sufficient to get a conviction, it’s far from certain that it would be persuasive enough, since the jury must be convinced not just a little bit, not just “a smidge more than 50-50,” but beyond a reasonable doubt. If, on the other hand, someone was charged with eight counts of the crime, and had eight different people testify that they had sex with him without his revealing his sereo-positve status, it would probably be easier to get that conviction.
We have laws against fraud. We don’t tell people, “Look, if you want to do business with them but are afraid of getting defrauded, then just don’t. And if you do, and you get defrauded, it’s your own fault.” Why? Because we expect the law to provide a certain stability; to enforce ordinary duties of care that people have towards each other. One of those duties of care is, “When you’re infected with an incurable and fatal disease, you must obtain the informed consent of those you place at risk, however slight, of sharing your disease.”
OK. But let’s remember, too, that it was the gay community that first resisted closing down the bathhouses, even though they were clearly the reason for much of the transmission of “GRID” as they styled it at the time.
And you can in turn, of course, justify that because they were fresh off the huge victory at Stonewall, and weren’t going to take being marginalized by straight America any more. If straight America had been accepting of gays back then, then there would have been no backlash and probably little resistance to a common-sense public health measure.
Very true. And it may well explain the strong reluctance to agree with mandatory disclosure laws now. But that explanation doesn’t transform this into the right idea. The idea is still wrong, even as the reason for it becomes a bit more understandable.
True. Although the distinction is obvious: herpes is not fatal.
And they do. But their right to get laid can’t erase the right of their partners to provide informed consent before fucking.
And I would be aghast at someone who had tuberculosis, knew he had tuberculosis, and did not disclose that fact to someone he was intimate with. And I can find state law after state law that provides for compulsory examination and treatment in the case of tuberculosis, enforced by emergency detention and quarantine, either in-home isolation or commitment to a secure state-run facility.
So, yeah. Tuberculosis, too.
Can you show me an example of such a state law? I’m familiar with federal laws for the quarantine of tuberculosis carriers, but no such state law.
Bingo…their “right to get laid and stay secret about their HIV status” ENDS right RIGHT where the other persons RIGHT to be informed begins.
And for the umptempth time. I still wanna know how many people would willing have sex with an HIV positive person even with protection, and yeah yeah yeah, "my life partner/soulmate"stuff may apply in some cases but IMO it sure aint going to ovewhelm the large numbers of “hey, you seem pretty nice, I’d like to have sex with you EXCEPT for the HIV thing”.
Let me clarify that I do personally feel that disclosure is the moral thing to do. I think that people SHOULD disclose their HIV status before getting intimate with someone else. I just do not think that it should be legally mandatory, necessarily.
It’s almost weird TO ME how libertarian I feel about this subject. It’s hard for me to feel a lot of sympathy for someone who jumped in, in this day and age, with all we know about HIV and AIDS, and didn’t take precautions regardless of what his flavor-of-the-day told him about his or her status. I don’t condemn those people who “caught” HIV in those circumstances morally, but I do kind of think they were being really stupid. And, like I noted before, there are so many more reasons to take precautions than just HIV and AIDS. If you’re obsessing over “the fatal one” then you’re really setting yourself up for long-term pain and suffering with the non-fatal ones if you aren’t taking precautions.
I guess my disagreement with mandatory disclosure is that it kind of weakens vigilance. There SHOULD BE vigilance if you’re having sex with people that you haven’t known intimately for a fairly long time. Every single time you do it. Woodworkers don’t treat table saws cavalierly. Lumberjacks don’t swing their axe around on a whim. People contemplating sex with a stranger (or near-stranger) shouldn’t be wetting their willy without putting a raincoat on. If your own irresponsibility is going to get you an invitation to a permanent relationship with your friendly neighborhood pharmacy corporation, then it behooves you to spend more time protecting yourself.
Again, I think people are morally obligated to disclose ALL of their possible transferable STDs before they get jiggy. But I know they’re not all going to, so I exercise my options.
Put me in that category (and I’m not a bug-chaser, nor is my partner HIV+). There are plenty of ways to “have sex” without swapping semen, none of which has even a tiny percentage chance of passing HIV if you’re taking precautions. If the guy is likeable, attractive and willing, I’m going for it. Responsibly.
Sure. Just to pick one I happen to know a bit about… Va Code § 32.1-43 provides in pertinent part:
That’s a reasonable fear. “I won’t worry about the raincoat, since he HAS to tell me if he’s positive.”
But on the whole, that is itself kind of weak. He may not know himself that he’s HIV+ – no one can be convicted on a failure to notify unless the Commonwealth can prove that he KNEW he was infected. So even someone relying on the law for protection has no business relaxing his vigilance. But this law gives the government a way to rein in a truly abusive asshole who just doesn’t care, as well as protect someone in cases of, “Ooops, the condom broke.”
Geezu christ.
There are serious laws about how PAWN shops operate for fracks sake. Whose life is going to irreparably changed because of a bad pawn shop transaction?
But when it comes to HIV, you put on your rain coat and you takes your chances…
My biggest concern would be that people can’t report what they don’t know. Required reporting might lead to people avoiding getting tested.
I wish I could say I agreed. But it’s not hard for me to imagine someone who’s HIV positive in a community with few HIV positive people, has no support structure and no dating pool, who just wants to be comforted for once. Honestly, I think a very small segment of the population is saintly enough to deal with this safely every single time.
I’m not saying that it’s right, I’m just explaining the world as I see it.
Actually herpes infection can be fatal (i.e. in immunosuppressed people and when transmitted to infants).
I note during a brief Google search that fatal herpes infections have also been reported in common marmosets and pygmy African hedgehogs, in case anyone was wondering.
“Won’t someone think of the common marmosets?”
So … we imagine someone who is interested in obeying the law, so much so that he avoids getting tested so that he doesn’t know, and therefore doesn’t have to disclose?
I’m sorry, but someone acting with such reckless disregard for his own health and his partners’ well-being doesn’t strike me as someone who would obey the law in the first place.
Hold on, though - failing to disclose one’s HIV+ status to one’s partner is pretty darned reckless in the first place. The whole point of mandatory disclosure laws is to control the behavior of (one hopes) a tiny minority of reckless jackasses. The argument that this law might inspire reckless jackasses to engage in worse behavior certainly seems a troubling one.
But is it fraud? I will gladly accept your legal interpretation on the matter, but I think the two possible scenarios that would likely play out raise very different moral and legal issues. Those being:
- Someone lying to a potential partner when asked
- No discussion at all.
If a potential partner makes a serious inquiry into the matter, and the infected person lies, I think they are doing something terribly immoral, and likely illegal. Not bringing it up at all, like what might happen during a drunken one-night-stand, has to be weighed against many other compelling interests.
It seems to me the latter situation would be logically related to one’s right to remain silent, duty of self-preservation, and privacy. I don’t intend to necessarily make a legal argument, but I think the underlying logic and philosophy behind those ideas would apply to the above as well. Obviously, those must be weighted against other societal concerns, but I am not sure we should always come down on the side society.
I am not sure I buy the whole informed consent angle either. Yes, I am sure people would want to know a partner’s health history, but in the case where someone doesn’t even bother to ask, or take basic steps to protect themselves, I would argue they have assumed the risk. Just the fact that they might have acted differently had they known should not be the standard in a case like this. I mean, an employer probably wouldn’t hire an HIV-infected person either, but it would seem unfair to me to expect people to disclose all their health issues before they are hired.