HIV This Week

Cameron E, Burris S, Clayton M. HIV is a virus, not a crime: ten reasons against criminal statutes and criminal prosecutions. J Int AIDS Soc. 2008;11(1):7. [Epub ahead of print]

The widespread phenomenon of enacting HIV-specific laws to criminally punish transmission of, exposure to, or non-disclosure of HIV, is counter-active to good public health conceptions and repugnant to elementary human rights principles. The authors provide ten reasons why criminal laws and criminal prosecutions are bad strategy in the epidemic.

Editors’ note: HIV is a virus not a crime and criminalisation of HIV is hostile to both HIV prevention and treatment. Knowing one’s HIV status and setting out deliberately to infect another person and achieving this aim demonstrates criminal intent warranting prosecution. However, there is no public health justification for invoking criminal law sanctions against those who unknowingly and unintentionally transmit HIV or expose others to it. Such criminalisation discourages HIV testing and counselling, the pathway to treatment access and HIV status-specific prevention; reinforces stigma, enhances fear, and isolates people living with HIV; and undercuts efforts to address the epidemic.