Friday 24 March 2017

Idiots on TMZ talk HIV criminalisation (video)


This is so fuckin bad. People who know nothing about living with HIV or the advances in medications making judgments about people with HIV. Mostly that transmitting the disease knowingly when you have HIV should remain a "felony". In other words, severely criminalised.

This has been the subject of many studies, and always the results of criminalisation is that it drives HIV+ people underground. Less likely to get tested and treated, meaning the person remains infectious. 


Recent studies have concluded that when an HIV+ person has an undetectable HIV viral load on treatment, that it's impossible to pass it on. These studies monitor gay couples over time in a sero-discordant relationship (only one of them HIV+) where the couple has unprotected sex. Results have shown no incidence of transmission of of HIV to the negative partner. Not one. This isn't an "argument" as stated in the video, it's a scientifically proven fact. 


There's also the thing that safe sex isn't just the responsibility of one person. It takes two to tango. The person receiving in a casual encounter should always insist on condoms, if for nothing else than avoiding the much more infectious sexually transmitted diseases around. Like for instance a new super strain of gonorrhea immune to all antibiotics. Ack!


At one point the lady host asks how do you know if you remain undetectable? Saying you may have been "6 months ago" but what about now? Oh FFS! The stupidity and sheer ignorance! You get a quarterly blood test every 3 months to check that.  I've had an undetectable viral load for a few years now. The meds I'm on suit me well. Get tested and treated. The thinking now is that you go on meds as soon as you're diagnosed to become undetectable. All part of a responsible approach to maybe ending HIV.


The lady commenter that says getting HIV is a possible death sentence is so exaggerated. If you take the pills you don't die anymore.


In short such punitive measures revolving around HIV+ sex are completely outdated and reflect early HIV hysteria. If we're to end HIV the answer isn't to criminalise it, but to treat us as human beings like everyone else. We're not murderers.



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