HIV and criminal law

HIV and criminal law features

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  Getting tough on criminalisation

  “Nothing short of barbaric.” This was the comment of a BBC presenter, confronted with the number and sheer arbitrary injustice of criminal convictions of people accused of transmitting...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Where HIV is a crime, not just a virus

  A new resource, HIV and the criminal law, has just been published by NAM. Its author, former HTU editor Edwin J Bernard, also presented on the issue at the...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Unsafe convictions?

  Why advocates have concerns over recent HIV and hepatitis B prosecutions, by Edwin J Bernard and Michael Carter ...

  From:HIV treatment update

HIV and criminal law in your own words

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  Life on HIV treatment – a personal perspective

  I’ve been taking HIV treatment for ten years – that's longer than the average life expectancy of someone with HIV when I was diagnosed back in 1991. I’ve...

  From:In your own words

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  Bored and horny

  It’s Sunday afternoon and it’s raining. I’m bored and horny. However, I’ve got £20 left over from the night before and this will be enough...

  From:In your own words

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  Anger - I was furious

  I wasn’t really surprised when I found out I had HIV, after all I went to have an HIV test because I had all the...

  From:In your own words

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  The sex police

  I met Amy through a friend – a friend who knew my HIV status. We got on really well and she asked if I wanted...

  From:In your own words

HIV and criminal law news from aidsmap

• Canadian study finds criminalisation confusion "chills" open and honest discussion of HIV risk-taking

  The lack of clarity over when a person with HIV has a legal obligation to disclose their HIV-positive status to a sexual partner is resulting in "anxiety, confusion and contradictory HIV counselling advice," according to a new study on ...

  23 August 2011 | Edwin J. Bernard

• Large gaps in the HIV prevention evidence base

  An analysis of research that is relevant to HIV prevention in the United Kingdom has identified several important topics on which little research is done. Writing in the journal BMC Public Health, the authors point to the lack of ...

  09 June 2011 | Roger Pebody

• Partners study expands our knowledge of HIV transmission risk

  A prevention study in which the intervention being tested failed is turning out to be a fertile source of information about HIV transmission risk in heterosexuals. Three substudies from the Partners in Prevention (PinP) prevention trial presented at the ...

  03 March 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Claims that phylogenetic analysis can prove direction of transmission are unfounded, say experts

  A report from the United States published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims to show for the first time that direction of HIV transmission from one individual to another for use as evidence in ...

  24 November 2010 | Edwin J. Bernard

• Higher HIV rates among black MSM in the US may be linked to attitudes about homosexuality

  Higher prevalence of negative attitudes about homosexuality among African-Americans than among whites may help to account for why the US AIDS epidemic has disproportionately struck African-American men who have sex with men (MSM). Two US researchers have proposed this association on ...

  21 September 2010 | Kelly Safreed-Harmon

• Majority of US gay men support HIV transmission laws

  Two-thirds of US gay men believe that it should be illegal for an HIV-positive man to have unprotected anal sex without disclosure, investigators report in the October edition of AIDS Care. “Believing that it should be illegal was associated with ...

  21 September 2010 | Michael Carter

• Three tactics to stem the tide of criminal prosecutions

  Scientists, lawyers and advocates have been able to reduce unwarranted prosecutions of HIV exposure and transmission in three European jurisdictions by employing three distinct approaches, Robert James told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference in Vienna last week. The conference also ...

  29 July 2010 | Roger Pebody

• North America and Western Europe lead the world in criminalising HIV transmission and exposure

  Worldwide, at least 600 individuals have now been convicted of transmitting HIV or of exposing others to the virus, a satellite session at AIDS 2010 was told. Whilst by far the greatest number of convictions has occurred in North ...

  19 July 2010 | Roger Pebody

• Vienna declaration calls for science-based drug policies

  Three leading scientific and health policy organizations this week launched a global drive for signatories to the Vienna Declaration, a statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence ...

  30 June 2010 | Press Release

• Uganda: Minister's turnaround on HIV bill raises concern

  Ugandan AIDS activists have expressed concern over a decision by the Ministry of Health to back an HIV/AIDS bill that would criminalize the deliberate transmission of HIV. Last week, State Minister for Health in charge of ...

  13 May 2010 | Reproduced from PLUS NEWS

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HIV and criminal law news selected from other sources

• Advocates Seek Changes to Iowa HIV Criminalization Law

  Advocates in Iowa are lobbying their state legislature to change the HIV criminalization law so that a person can be prosecuted only in cases that include both an intent to transmit and an actual transmission, The Daily Iowan reports.

  13 February 2012 | Poz magazine news

• HIV treatment not advanced enough to dismiss full disclosure, court told

  Medical treatment for HIV has not advanced enough to preclude the duty for someone infected with the virus to not disclose their status to a sex partner, the Supreme Court of Canada heard Wednesday.

  09 February 2012 | Ottawa Citizen

• Global Commission on HIV and the Law: Criminal Law as a Risk Factor for MSM

  AIDS-Free World denounces, in no uncertain terms, the criminalization of LGBTQI identities and the criminalization of any same-sex behavior. Not only does this criminalization violate human rights law, it has and will continue to serve as a death sentence for individuals all over the world — allowing them to be targeted for brutal violence, and putting them at a heightened, and completely unnecessary, risk of HIV. 

  08 February 2012 | AIDS Free World

• HIV Criminalization Face-Off: One Poz Man and His Accuser

  What if you could witness a face-to-face confrontation between a man living with HIV and the sex partner accusing him of not revealing his status? Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on that wall?

  08 February 2012 | My Fabulous Disease (video)

• Singapore: Two men with HIV jailed for non-disclosure to same man at different times

  A 27 year-old former civil engineer and a 48 year-old married man who had casual sex at different times with a 37 year-old man (who subsequently tested HIV-positive) have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison because they did not disclose they were HIV-positive.

  07 February 2012 | Criminal HIV Transmission

• Chinese province may have new rule on HIV disclosure

  HIV-positive men and women in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region may soon be required by law to tell partners their status the moment their test results are known. 

  07 February 2012 | AsiaOne

• HIV: Criminal law not the right approach

  The criminal law should be used only as a last resort in cases where provisions within existing public health laws have failed to discourage behaviour likely to lead to HIV transmission, argues the Vancouver Sun in an editorial ahead of a Canadian Supreme Court review of any requirement for disclosure of HIV status prior to sexual intercourse.

  07 February 2012 | Vancouver Sun

• Do people with HIV have to tell their sex partners? Canadian Supreme Court to decide

  Canada's highest court is set to hear arguments over whether it's a crime for people with HIV to keep their condition from their sexual partners if the risk of transmission is low. 

  05 February 2012 | City News

• Same-Sex Couples Saved From HIV Disclosure Laws

  In Florida, if an HIV positive person knows that he is HIV positive and has been informed that HIV may be transmitted during sexual intercourse, and has sexual intercourse with any other person without disclosing his HIV status, it can be prosecuted. But courts are ruling that the statute cannot be applied to same-sex couples.

  01 February 2012 | South Florida Gay News

• Man sues strip club, government after contracting HIV

  A Toronto man who found out nearly eight years ago that his Thai stripper wife had infected him with HIV has no one to blame but himself, the Ontario Superior Court heard Tuesday.

  31 January 2012 | The Province

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