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From: bob@ozdaltx.UUCP (Bob Culmer)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: Intentional Transmission of AIDS
Summary: Non objective law = tyranny
Keywords: criminal recklessness
Message-ID: <39513@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 27 Sep 90 13:50:35 GMT
References: <38625@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <39235@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <39321@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
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Organization: AIDS INFO EXCG/OZ BBS - Dallas, TX
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Approved: ddodell@stjhmc.fidonet.org (David Dodell)
Note:	Copyright 1990 by Daniel R. Greening.  Permission granted for
Note:	non-commercial reproduction.
Archive-number: 2559

In article <39321@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, li40163@prism.gatech.edu (M. AXFORD) writes:
> 
> in Georgia one can be prosecuted for reckless conduct if one 
> has unsafe sex knowing one is HIV+.  If convicted there is a jail
> term and fine.
>     Sure, one should take responsibility for one's self.  But I 
> do think people who behave this way should be prosecuted.  It
> totally horrifies me that there are people who care so little 
> they are willing to risk causing someone else's death.

While I agree that such behavior is horrifying, I'm perhaps as
horrified about the kind of thinking that says this is not your own
responsibility.  Even more, to define this as a crime where the
evidence upon which someone is to be convicted is necessarily so vague
bothers me a lot.  What basis will the prosecution use for proving
that a person "knowingly" inflected someone?  A swearing match in
which the most engaging personality is believed?  Perhaps the
conofidentiality of all medical records of everyone you've ever slept
with should be abolished in an effort to determine if they had ever
been tested?  And don't you think that such would only encourage
people NOT to know their own status and get treatment?  If I had every
symptom of the AIDS definition but hadn't been tested how would you
prove *I* knew I had it to be a knowing infector? 

It is one thing to subscribe to a personal moral belief about this act
and quite another to attempt to codify that as law, while protecting
the rights of all participants.  Despite wide spread misconception
people do not have a right to a "risk free" world where they have no
responsibility for their own well being.

-- 
Bob Culmer - Dallas        | "Hearts will never be practical until 
Somewhere over the rainbow |  they can be made unbreakable." - Wizard
...in the Land of OZ       | "But I still want one." - Tin Man
            {mic,void,egsner}!ozdaltx!bob