HIV hysteria has taken hold in the Czech Republic, with health authorities teaming up with law enforcement, launching an investigation into 30 men who they say are HIV positive but have been having unprotected sex.
How do they know this? They say because they got other (much more easily caught BTW) sexual infections so therefore that proves they weren't using a condom.
Scant "evidence" indeed. Were the men on treatment, therefore undetectable and not infectious? Were both partners HIV+? Condoms aren't 100% reliable.
What's more nobody has come forward complaining that they had sex with them without knowing they were positive.
Of course this will only increase STI's as men won't come forward to get treated for fear of being investigated by the state.
There are no complainants in the case, nor any evidence anyone has contracted HIV from the 30 men under investigation. The sole evidence against the men is that they contracted other sexually transmitted infections (STI) — like gonorrhea or syphilis — after testing HIV-positive, which the health department contends is proof they had condomless sex in violation of the law.
“There’s absolutely no evidence, there are no victims,” said Jakub Tomšej, a lawyer with the Czech AIDS Help Society, which has provided counseling to some of the men under investigation. “We believe the only consequence [of this kind of investigation] is that HIV-positive people who get another STI will simply avoid doctors.”
Tomšej said he had spoken to nine men directly, and all said they had contracted the other infections through sex with another person who was also diagnosed as HIV-positive or despite wearing condoms, which are not 100 percent effective against conditions like syphilis.
The department has not appeared to have factored in whether the men were on effective treatment, which can reduce their viral load so much that they are not at risk of transmitting the disease, Tomšej said.
Many other European countries prosecute people for HIV exposure, according to Edwin Bernard, the U.K.-based head of the HIV Justice Network, which campaigns against HIV criminalization, but usually prosecutions only happen when a sexual partner goes to the police to file a complaint. There are also comparable laws on the books in 33 U.S. states.
The United Nations AIDS agency has called on states to reign in laws criminalizing HIV exposure, warning that they can drive people away from medical services proven to control the disease. States should strictly “limit any application of criminal law to truly blameworthy cases” in which someone intentionally transmitted the illness, the agency recommends.
The Czech investigations not only go well beyond that guidance, said Jaime Todd-Gher, who leads a project on sexual and reproductive rights for Amnesty International, it also goes well beyond even other far-reaching HIV transmission investigations.
“I’ve never heard of a public health witch hunt [against] people living with HIV and violating medical privacy to do it,” Todd-Gher told BuzzFeed News. Buzzfeed
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