Big RR wrote:
Recompense? Quite likely; because one's neglgient or deliberate behavior led to the injury, the victim may well deserve some recompense (compensation) from the person injuring him or her. But this is why we have a civil law system--to provide comepnsation to those injured. It is not the province of criminal law to do this; criminal law is directed toward removing the offender from society and/or punishing/rehabilitating him or her. The criminal sanction is a serious one, and I think there should be a high bar to insitituting it.
What of the serial offender? Should we carry on letting him have sex unprotected , and leave it to his victims to sue afterward?
That doesn't make a lot of sense does it?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Interesting point; I don't know enoguh about the transmission of HIV and whether this would apply, but I would imagine some sort of Quarantine court order could be issued for someone who kept putting others at risk. It happens with other communicable diseases.
I'd be happy with him being quarantined, as long as it was permanent.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Oh yeah right, along with the 'H1N1 carriers' and 'BSE (Mad Cow Disease) Infected' ...somebody order more Scarlet Letters to stigmatize all these folks, just because they're sick.
Bullshit. Come on, Loca, this is beneath you. I don't give a shit if he's sick, I give a shit that he is deliberately spreading HIV around to people. He should be locked up forever.
And how much is he actually spreading it; clearly every sexual encounter with an unifected partner will not result in contraction of HIV, as the effiiciency of transmission is not 100%. The question is, how high does it have to be for him to be labeled a danger? And how do we assess what he knew and how deliberate his actions were? Clearly if the large majority of uninfected persons he has sexual contact with do not contract HIV, he may well think the health warnings are overstated and utter BS. This attitude may be nergligient or even reckless, but it can be far from deliberate.
In one of the most widely known quarantine cases in the US, "Typhoid" Mary, she was a carrier of typhoid and warned not to work in food service. however, in her min she was not sick, and didn't buy she had anything which could be spread to others (nor did she buy the public health story of invisible microorganisms inside her infecting others (it would be like someone telling you to give up your job because invisible spirits in you could deleteriously affect the mental well-being of your coworkers, you wouldn't buy it either, I'd bet). The same may well be true here.
If this guy is, indeed, a demonstrable public health danger, society can choose to quarantine him, not as a punishment, but to protect the public. If he's deliberately seeking to infect others with AIDS virus (and this can be ashown), he may well be guilty of a crime and punished; however, until I see evidence of this, I refuse to jump to conclusions.
Miles--define knowingly; is it he knows he will infect the person, knows he might infect the person (and, if this, how much certainty do we need, would a 1 in 1000 or 1 in a million chance be enough?), has been informed of the risk and disregards it (or doesn't believe it)? The question is much more complex than just saying "He has HIV so he knows he will spread the virus to anyone he has unprotected sexual contact with--because, firstly, th einfection is far from a certainty and, second, any assessment of the risk will depend on how convincing (and truthful) the person telling him is.
I think few, if any, people set out to deliberately infect another person.
Big RR wrote:Miles--define knowingly; is it he knows he will infect the person, knows he might infect the person (and, if this, how much certainty do we need, would a 1 in 1000 or 1 in a million chance be enough?), has been informed of the risk and disregards it (or doesn't believe it)? The question is much more complex than just saying "He has HIV so he knows he will spread the virus to anyone he has unprotected sexual contact with--because, firstly, th einfection is far from a certainty and, second, any assessment of the risk will depend on how convincing (and truthful) the person telling him is.
I think few, if any, people set out to deliberately infect another person.
Perhaps, however, in this the information age it is doubtful that anyone diagnosed with HIV since 1997 would not have sufficent information to realize the danger of spreading it. Thirteen years is a long time living with that kind of weight around your neck. The fact that he is still healthy enough to have sex indicates that he would need to know how to stay that way. But I still of the opinion that if he knowingly infects one person he should be locked up. The very fact that he does know he is HIV positive and engages in unprotected sex and infects someone, in my mind constitutes knowingly.
I expect to go straight to hell...........at least I won't have to spend time making new friends.
Shoot, men engage in sex without contraceptives all the time, regardless they knowingly are aware that sex can lead to procreation. You can't tell me pregnancy isn't dangerous and life-changing.
loCAtek wrote:Shoot, men engage in sex without contraceptives all the time, regardless they knowingly are aware that sex can lead to procreation. You can't tell me pregnancy isn't dangerous and life-changing.
Yeah I've used the excuse "I was just walking along minding my own business when I tripped and fell inside her".
Short of rape it takes 2 to tango...
Sometimes it seems as though one has to cross the line just to figger out where it is
I cannot believe that anyone rational will think that a person who knows they are HIV+ who has unprotected sex with another person, does not know of the risk that they place that person at. Sure an uninfected partner has a responsibility to protect themselves, but KNOWING you have HIV, and having unprotected sex is at best totally irresponsible, at worse criminally reckless. Doing it on multiple occasions is criminal behaviour.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
H1N1 is not anywhere near as fatal and doesn't have lifelong implications. Not to mention we have no way of knowing if the the people in question actually had H1N1 vs. the common cold / flu or had knowledge of it if they did.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
I DO find his behavior reprehensible, but it's unknown if his negligence is because of ignorance, arrogance or malice.
I am not certain but I don't think, pertaining to the law, that makes much difference. In fact isn't there a saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse"?
I expect to go straight to hell...........at least I won't have to spend time making new friends.
Gob wrote:I cannot believe that anyone rational will think that a person who knows they are HIV+ who has unprotected sex with another person, does not know of the risk that they place that person at. Sure an uninfected partner has a responsibility to protect themselves, but KNOWING you have HIV, and having unprotected sex is at best totally irresponsible, at worse criminally reckless. Doing it on multiple occasions is criminal behaviour.
what is that risk, though, gob? It's far from a certainty (just as pregnancy is not a result of every sexual encounter where contraception is not used.
Miles--what law do you think exists? Generally state of mind is part of the elements of a crime unless there is a specific staute that prohibits an act under all circumstances (e.g. A person who is HIV positive cannot have unprotected sex"). I know of no such statute here, so it basically comes down to what his state of mind was.
Perhaps there should be a law against an HIV positive individual engaging in any sex, other than with, possibly another infected person. On a personal note if I were diagnosed with HIV I certainly would abstain completely as I would not want the risk infecting anyone.
I expect to go straight to hell...........at least I won't have to spend time making new friends.
