Criminalising sexual behaviour will end up doing more harm than good.

Maybe a few will end up doing community service but others might be less inclined to engage with health services for fear that their sexual past might be used against them at some point in the future?

Messages about safe sex, and the reasons for it have been around for over 20 years, ultimately we must take responsibility for our own actions, surely?

Criminalising sexual behaviour will end up doing more harm than good.

But it’s not criminalising sexual behaviour. You can still do whatever you want with whoever you want, as long as it is consensual. But consent is the key, here. What you can’t do – either in bed or elsewhere in life – is deliberately or recklessly mislead people into an injurious act to which they would not otherwise have consented. It’s GBH.

[3] “But it’s not criminalising sexual behaviour” – so apart from trashing this woman’s reputation (if we take the case in hand) why is it a matter for the court if sexual behaviour is NOT being criminalised?

In 2007 we had nearly 400,000 sexually transmitted infections – now that’s a lot of criminals, or do genital warts, herpes or neurosyphillis not count?
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1216022446179

[3] or maybe sexual transmission of hepatitis (especially the C virus) might be a better comparison?

If you’re going to prosecute people for irresponsible behaviour it has to be because they failed to use barrier methods while being aware that they were HIV positive or had herpes or any other STD. It can’t be because they chose not to disclose their medical status to someone who they had casual sex with. Society shouldn’t punish people for having casual sex and nor should you say no one who is HIV positive or has another ongoing medical condition that is sexually transmitted should ever have casual sex with someone who they don’t wish to disclose their medical status to. The truth is that anyone who sleeps with people who they don’t know that well is risking their health and if they’re not taking precautions every time than they’re behaving irresponsibly towards themselves. We shouldn’t infantilise grown adults by pretending they don’t know that risk is there and we shouldn’t penalise people who are HIV positive by criminalising them for choosing to behave like people who haven’t done anything wrong.

If someone knows they have chlamydia, sleeps with a woman once, passes it on and they become infertile are they liable to be prosecuted? Hepatitis C? What about HPV- who do you charge for cervical cancer?

apart from trashing this woman’s reputation

Someone’s had their body seriously damaged and their life very likely curtailed through her knowing and reckless actions. Excuse me for not being flooded with sympathy at this slur against her good name.

Also, we should prosecute people with influenza or other airborne communicable diseases who go to work regardless, or who travel, thus causing the deaths of other people who catch the disease from them.

An exception will be made for those who ring a bell and shout “Unclean!” as they go about their day, who will be deemed to have given those around them sufficient warning.

Rubbish she knew she was HIV positive, knowing this she had a duty to warn people or take action not top spread it. God sake HIV does kill and if it does not kill you now boy it changes your life believe me, I had a blood transfusion from tainted American blood, it took four years of HIV drugs which has side affects I’d not wish on anyone. It took four years for me to know I was clear, but even if I was not clear I would not want to pass it on.

This women may as well as used a loaded gun

Well Cim, states can indeed legally quarantine people with serious infectious disease such e.g plague or ebola.

If we’re playing your clever game of reductio ad absurdam than I shall assume you are flatly opposed to all such measures.

Or we could conclude that there are no easy one-size-fits-all answers, and have a more sensible discussion about where exactly the line between personal and legal responsibility should lie.

Knowingly having sex with someone whilst infected with HIV is the same thing as trying to shoot them twenty years before they would normally die. Don’t give me all this crap that it’s victimising sexuality or any nonsense like that. If you’re infected with a STI then you should let your partners know. However, the key difference between HIV and, say, genital warts, is that the latter will not kill you.

Maybe it’s being authoritarian but I don’t care, to me what Ms Nadja Benaissa did is nothing less than attempted murder. Having met a woman who was infected with HIV by a man she slept with who had not told her he was HIV positive, I can safely say that being infected is a life sentence. This woman was infected when she was in her early twenties, as a result she’s had to deal with a myriad side effects of medication, been effectively disowned by most of her family and has rarely been able to have what could be considered anything like a normal physical relationship with another human being.

Before you go jumping to the defence of Ms Benaissa think about her victim.

[10] “the key difference between HIV and, say, genital warts, is that the latter will not kill you” – no but cervical cancer will, and cervical cancer is usually caused by papilloma virus (aka warts).
http://www.jostrust.org.uk/about-cervical-cancer/cervical-cancer/causes-of-cervical-cancer?gclid=CKLbsNW7yqMCFUqX2Aod1121vA

[6] “Excuse me for not being flooded with sympathy at this slur against her good name” – this is veering on the sort of vindictiveness one associates with trial by meeja.

That’s rubbish a&e. You were bemoaning the fact that her reputation was being unfairly ‘trashed’ when she herself has acknowledged that her behaviour was reprehensible and apologised for it. I’m simply agreeing with her assessment.

Re: a&e @ 1

Having sex is sexual behaviour. Intentionally and recklessly transmitting a lethal virus is not sexual behaviour.

Hope this clears things up for you, cheers.

If someone hasn’t already pointed this out (I haven’t read all the posts) there have already been several successful prosecutions of people who transmitted HIV to sexual partners by having unprotected sex when they knew they were infected. The first one I came across would have been about 5 years ago, but I think there may have been some prior to that.

What an interesting post for a liberal blog. So much so that I had to take the very unusual step of responding as I feel that this blog is ill-informed, illogical and at its heart illiberal.
Having read Zoe Williams’ original article I think that its general point, that criminalising sexual behaviours should be approached with extreme caution, is the right appraoch. Although I think that the arguments that Zoe uses are fairly flimsy and miss out more valid points than the ones that she has included. I think that criminalising sexual behaviours needs to be thoroughly examined before any action is taken, particularly in this case, where an entire group of people are being criminalised by default for the fact of being infected with a virus. It is not a liberal position to place the burden on one group, nor is it good public policy to create prohibition on sexual behaviours, which is effectively the position that is being advocated in this blog.
Jennifer says that taking this attitude is irresponsible and undermines the efforts of sex educators and public health practitioners. Well, as a former sex educator and health promotion professional I can tell Jennifer that the opposite is true. Sex education is about informing people in advance of their participation in activities so that they can weigh up risks and make decisions about what is out of their control, so that they can protect their health and choose what happens and when it happens (so that we have fewer unintended pregnancies and more planned ones, for example). It is not about blaming other people, creating ‘health-based stranger danger’ or creating an environment of fear. Good sex education is about ensuring that people have the knowledge, skills and abilities to have a happy and healthy sex life.
I’d urge Jennifer to do some research in advance of writing blogs such as this. Jennifer either gets the science badly wrong (maybe you don’t understand the difference between HIV and AIDS), or is unaware of how writing about HIV can be full of pitfalls. For the science: HIV does not kill (or very rarely). The V part of HIV stands for virus, the virus itself does not kill, the virus interferes with the bodies immune system, creating the conditions in which other illnesses can flourish and it is these illnesses that kill. If you are going to use science to form a plank of your argument then you really ned to get the science right.
You’ve conflated having HIV with promiscuity – the presence of one does not cause the other. But pairing them together is very telling. You say that promiscuity should not be a moral question but one of practical healthcare. Yet you still refer to it as promiscuity rather than simply sexual behaviours. The language that you use is morally loaded and sets out a position where you make judgements on things you seem to be ill informed about. This isn’t really acceptable when you are encouraging the criminalisation of a group of people who Liberals generally support – again, a little bit of research would show that new HIV infections tend to be in lower socio-economic groups, tend to go hand in hand with deprivation, tend to sit alongside other indicators of poverty, ill-health and flourishes in marginalised groups (ethnic minorities and gay men are still disproportionately affected by HIV).
You go on to say that promiscuous people should do a range of things. What exactly do you mean by this? What do you mean by promiscuous? And why should they do these things that you say? Why don’t they have the right to live their lives as they wish?
Yet you conveniently forget to mention those having sex with these ‘promiscuous people’. And you forget that they also have responsibilities. You never mention that the person having sex with these ‘promiscuous people’ are aware of HIV, of other STI’s, of the risk of pregnancy, yet often make a choice not to protect themselves. In case you have forgotten sex is a (usually) two-way deal, where both people make active choices and participate in a range of acts that they like.
Your argument here is basically placing all the burden on one half of a duo and absolving the other half of responsibility. Where the reality is that we all have a responsibility to protect ourselves, knowing full well of the existence of STIs. If we make choices that expose ourselves to those STIs then we must take on a level of responsibility for dealing with the consequences of our actions. Something that you fail to consider and yet is the thing that truly is at the heart of sex education and public health.
It is not an irresponsible attitude to say that people should take responsibility for themselves but that must apply to all equally and not just to one set of the population. It is illiberal to place all the burden one one side of a partnership and criminalise them if they fail to take responsibility for both sides of that partnership when they are already in a position of being discriminated against, stigmatised and face ill-informed moral judgements.

[13] so this woman intended to transmit hiv, as opposed to thinking she could get away with it (as her partner must have thought when decided against using a condom during casual sex).

Please tell us how you know this?

WTF? I can’t believe there’s even debate over this. I should think even most libertarians would agree that if the state should exist to intervene anywhere, it’s in the defence of citizens from each other – knowingly infecting someone with an incurable and deadly virus without their consent is akin to poisoning them.

Also the author of the original article, Zoe Williams – wow. HIV in the western world isn’t a death sentence? Yeah, tell that to HIV+ Americans who can’t get retrovirals because their insurance doesn’t cover them for that. Not to mention the privilege of the comment. You see, nobody in the western world EVER sleeps with people in the developing world or people without access to affordable healthcare… [/sarc]

“knowingly infecting someone with an incurable and deadly virus without their consent is akin to poisoning them”

and what about opening yourself up to anything without having due regard for your own safety? Using your analogy that is akin to suicide.

Both sides have responsibilities here. But we are talking of criminsalising only one side. It is unequal treatment at work and it is not libertarian to take such an uneven-handed approach.

Neither side should be criminalised where neither side take action to protect themselves or others. Where one side takes action to protect and that is sabotaged by the other then there may be a case for criminalisation.

Both sides have responsibilities here. But we are talking of criminsalising only one side.

The other side (the victim) is suffering punishment enough.

@18

The criminality of one side is because it’s about levels of responsibilty. Just because I should take steps to lock my doors and windows when I leave the house, doesn’t mean I am as equally responsible for a theft as my burglar. There’s irresponsibility and criminal irresponsibility.

Unmentioned so far is that there are variants of HIV.

Thus it would be possible for someone like Nadja Benaissa to have unprotected sex with a partner carrying a different variant of HIV. A human is capable of carrying more than one form of HIV and drug treatment is less effective under such circumstances, Ms Benaissa was not only irresponsible to others but to herself.

I’m afraid I disagree with you. Whilst what she did was awful, does she really need to be jailed? I daresay the shame brought about by this will have changed her outlook on sex considerably.

[15] very well put.

I’m still not sure if the commentators are making the case for criminalising ALL sexually transmitted infections (amongst those who are aware of their diagnosis) or making an exceptional case for hiv?

Either way, as devastating as a positive diagnosis is, the courts are not the most appropriate place to deal with the problem – not least because of the ‘policing’ that before long would soon be pervading the nation’s boudoir?

it’d be nothing like that nurse, but hooray for bringing ridiculous conclusions to blur an already tough area of discussion.

To allen, and by extension others, there is nothing illiberal about prosecuting people for reckless and endangering behaviour. We do it in all areas of life from health and safety law, through driving offences, to negligence.

Yes, it should extend beyond just hiv, a person that will have their life affected by YOUR actions, and cost the state more through your choices, should be at least fined for their intentional lack of consideration and care. This isn’t limited to sexual behaviour, but all behaviour.

This isn’t about sex, it’s purely about reasonable responsibility, and i laugh at the premise that someone with hiv going on without treatment, to avoid a prosecution, won’t get it diagnosed whether they want too or not fairly soon simply due to the normal deterioration and weaknesses it causes.

[24] “hooray for bringing ridiculous conclusions to blur an already tough area of discussion” – yes, not wanting to criminalise people because a sexual partner preferred not to use any precautions (despite years of advertising the risks), how ridiculous can you get, eh?

So any and all cases should be pursued through the court where harm arises as a result of unprotected sex – now given that we have some 400,000 cases per year I suspect the courts will need to be running 24/7 to fit everybody in?

I don’t think you have really thought this one through, have you?
Here is a programme that you might find instructive, especially the bit about the young woman who is hiv+ and is avoiding treatment (despite her consultant chasing her half way round west London) – I suspect she may end up as one of the first cases in the new and exciting sexual crimes court?
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-hospital/episode-guide/series-2/episode-1

Just to flag up some of the harms that our judges will need to consider if we go down the criminalisation road.

So for example, if pelvic inflammatory disease develops (after a sexually transmitted infection) it may result in chronic abdominal pain, menstrual disturbances, dyspareunia, infertility, tubal pregnancy, medical consultation and medication, time off work, and psychological sequelae. The most disastrous consequence of salpingitis is sterility. The proportion of patients with salpingitis who develop tubal occlusion rises from 10-13% with a first attack to 75% with three or more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550157/pdf/bmjcred00583-0061.pdf

Would someone with flu who doesn’t keep themselves isolated also be considered a criminal?

I’m open to persuasion – though not persuaded – that we should keep these things out of court to prevent a slew of disastrous unintended conesquences. (Against that, I’d argue that the occasional high profile prosecution should act as a useful deterrent.)

But I’m not remotely persuadable that there is anything inherently illiberal or ridiculous in prosecuting for grevious bodily harm someone who unarguably and knowingly did exactly that. And hilarious disanalogies along the lines of ‘so are we also going to prosecute people who sneeze in public’ aren’t likely to change my mind.

[28] fair enough, Larry – first of all I think the pro-criminalisers have to make a case for a threshold of what constitutes harm?

Lets say somebody is infected with HPV (although no active warts) should they be obliged to tell a new partner about their asymptomatic condiditon, or more to the point infection with papilloma is a known precursor to cervical cancer?

Or lets say somebody has unprotected sex with multiple partners and transmits chlamydia (unaware of their asymptomatic condition) – the infected goes on to develop pelvic inflammatory disease and as result has major problems with fertility.

The list is endless once we factor in the likes of hepatitis or genital herpes.

Harm can arise in all of these situations so I ask again is hiv a special case – some commentators here [24] claim “there is nothing illiberal about prosecuting people for reckless and endangering behaviour” – problem is they fail to define exactly what these purely descriptive terms mean.

Larry: Yes, the government can, in those specific cases. But influenza can be fatal (as deaths per year goes, it’s one of the more fatal diseases in the UK) and the government doesn’t quarantine or arrest people with it. People can move around mostly normally in the early and late stages of infection.

I don’t see any reason to single out HIV specifically or even STIs in general if in the absence of intent to transmit disease taking actions which lead to the infection of someone with a harmful disease is to become prosecutable. (If it can be shown that there is intent to infect, then that’s obviously different, but that’s not the situation being debated)

This has got to be one of the best pages about this case I have scanned over so far (sorry, but I’m really busy). I oppose the view of The Guardian and Zoe Williams, but mostly Edwin Bernard who seems to be making a career out of finding excuses for people with HIV not to tell their partners. The Guardian if you view the comment grid engages in rigorous censorship of comments especially mine. I guess they just don’t like my opinion of Edwin Bernard who wrote the other Guardian article about Benaissa and who I wrote a report about recently at http://stdcarriers.com/registry/bio/1112-edwinj-bernard-hivandaids.aspx

That guy Bernard claims to be an expert in Criminal HIV Transmission, but I feel like more or an expert having compiled detailed profiles of over 100 offenders from media research conducted rarely over the past year and a half or so.

Harm can arise in all of these situations so I ask again is hiv a special case – some commentators here [24] claim “there is nothing illiberal about prosecuting people for reckless and endangering behaviour” – problem is they fail to define exactly what these purely descriptive terms mean.

I’m surprised so many people are so surprised by this issue. It’s been established law in this country for well over a century – there was a criminal prosecution for the reckless transmission of gonnorhea (from husband to wife) back in the 1880s, and the issue is specifically provided for in the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 (which is still in force and is where we get the crimes of assault, battery, ABH and GBH from among others). There was a very good journal article on this subject ages ago – it’s hidden away in Lexis Nexis but there’s a very apposite passage on risk and recklessness

The second variation of the public health argument is that, should the reckless transmission of disease be punishable, those who know that they may have contracted sexually transmissible diseases and who still wish to enjoy active sex-lives will take care to avoid health-checks, in order to ensure that any partners they infect are not infected recklessly.

This argument turns on a mistaken understanding of the legal concept of recklessness. As we have seen, a person counts as reckless where he takes a risk of which he is aware, in a situation where a reasonable person would avoid it. A person is aware of the risk of passing on a sexually transmissible disease not only where he knows he is infected, but also where, although not certain, he knows that he may be. So, far from discouraging those who know they may be infected from having health-checks, imposing criminal liability for infecting other people recklessly ought rationally to have the opposite effect. The law that would positively discourage possibly infected people from having health-checks is the one that made it a crime to infect someone when you know you are diseased, but not when you merely think you may be. And this, surely, is the position if criminal liability for the transmission of disease is restricted to where it is done intentionally—because, as we have seen, a person is potentially regarded as acting intentionally where he knows that his conduct is certain or virtually certain to cause the harm or injury that the law is concerned to prevent.

In public health terms, the real question is the message that the criminal law gives out. This should be a message that encourages responsible behaviour in sexual relations. Would criminal liability for the reckless transmission of disease encourage responsible behaviour, or not?

To infect an unsuspecting person with a grave disease you know you have, or may have, by behaviour that you know involves a risk of transmission, and that you know you could easily modify to reduce or eliminate the risk, is to harm another in way that is both needless and callous. For that reason, criminal liability is justified unless there are strong countervailing reasons. In my view there are not.

[32] “As we have seen, a person counts as reckless where he takes a risk of which he is aware” – well all the evidence points to a very sizable population of risk takers in the UK, judging by the rate of sexually transmitted infections each year (400,000), not to mention nearly 200,000 abortions.

It seems a bit unfair to me that we should have just one or two high profile cases (dealt with in the courts) while everybody else is able to escape similar legal proceeding.

We have an estimated 83,000 cases of hiv in the uk – around 75% are aware that they have acquired this wretched virus.
Given the lack of legal cases here, I assume nobody in the UK has done the same thing that Miss Benaissa has ow owned up to Germany (all in the glare of the national media, how edifying, eh?)
http://www.avert.org/uk-statistics.htm

Maybe this case is the merely tip of a legal iceberg, and before long a flood of cases involving all sorts of sexual infections will soon become the order of the day?

Virtually all of these problems could greatly reduced if only the public could follow the advice that’s been out there for some time (with regard to safer sex) – the transmission of gonnorhea in the 1880′s is one thing but the same hardly applies nowadays given that we are able to cure this type of infection, or even preventing infection from occurring in the first place.

Of course, such a scenario relies on people taking more responsibility for their own health in the first place.

Given the lack of legal cases here, I assume nobody in the UK has done the same thing that Miss Benaissa has ow owned up to Germany (all in the glare of the national media, how edifying, eh?)

There are two high-profile precedent cases generally cited, and I think there have been in the region of 10 or so cases in the UK as a whole. The two prominent ones are R v Dica and R v Konzani. It’s fair to say though that this is a developing area of law.

Maybe this case is the merely tip of a legal iceberg, and before long a flood of cases involving all sorts of sexual infections will soon become the order of the day?

Not under criminal law. It’s been evidentially held that only HIV counts as GBH – the impact of other STIs being much less significant. I’d have thought that one would be able personally to sue someone who gave you an infection under standard tort law – although it’s not an area I’m desperately familar with. I knw there have been cases in the US where this has happened.

[35] death from cervical cancer after infection with papilloma ( a la Jade Goode?) or chronic active hepatitis deemed to be ‘less significant’ – the mind boggles at such legal judgements.

35 – This is definitely not my area, but apparently the reason that papilloma and hepatitis are not generally prosecuted is that it is very much more difficult to prove (by phylogenetic analysis) that the defendant was the one responsible for the transmission. It’s tough enough with HIV. That said, there has recently been a criminal case where the defendant pleaded guilty to transmitting Hep B.

The fact is that it is always going to be extremely hard to prove to a criminal standard of proof that the defendant was the one who transmitted the virus. The reason there are more HIV prosecutions than any other is both because it is relatively easier to demonstrate infection, and that there is a direct provable link between HIV and AIDS, whereas HPV, for example, greatly increases the risk of cancer. But then, smoking greatly increases the risk of lung cancer, and we don’t arrest newsagents for assault with a deadly weapon.

36 – further to that, the relevant law can be found in the CoA judgment in Dica

“The effect of this judgment in relation to s.20 is to remove some
of the outdated restrictions against the successful prosecution of
those who, knowing that they are suffering HIV or some other serious sexual disease, recklessly transmit it through consensual sexual intercourse, and inflict grievous bodily harm on a person from whom the risk is concealed and who is not consenting to it,” [2004] 2 Cr. App. R. 28 at [59]

[37] thanks for that – but I still stand by my assertion that sex and risk taking seem to be virtually inseparable for hundreds of thousands of individuals?

I am also skeptical that there are not more than 2 cases where a person with hiv had unprotected sex with another without informing them of their hiv status.
By the way is the crime actual transmission of the virus, or is there a case for psychological damage that could potentially arise if a potential victim has morbid thoughts about what MIGHT have happened (with manifestations like multiple testing to prove to themselves time and time again that have not acquired the virus?).

I guess the law can, and will, hook the odd unfortunate individual but I suppose once we follow these ideas to their logical conclusion we could end up with a very significant culture shift, perhaps akin to ‘date rape’, involving various accusations about who did what, where and when in the bedroom (but always problematic to prove ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ in a court of law?).

I am also skeptical that there are not more than 2 cases where a person with hiv had unprotected sex with another without informing them of their hiv status.

No-one said there weren’t.

I am also skeptical that there are not more than 2 cases where a person with hiv had unprotected sex with another without informing them of their hiv status.
By the way is the crime actual transmission of the virus, or is there a case for psychological damage that could potentially arise if a potential victim has morbid thoughts about what MIGHT have happened (with manifestations like multiple testing to prove to themselves time and time again that have not acquired the virus?).

The crime is GBH – the same as if you break someone’s leg with a hammer. There is no separate, identifiable crime of transmitting a sexually transmitted disease (although that is being considered I believe). Things like the difficulty of proving transmission of HPV or Hepatitis (and, in fact, the difficulty of proving that it was the HPV that caused the cancer) mean that this will usually be transmission of HIV. As I said, there have been about 10 or so successful UK prosecutions. This is probably both because reckless transmission of HIV in the UK is pretty rare, and that it is very hard to prove.

That’s also a reason why all the cases (I think) in the UK have involved people in relationships and not casual one-night stands.

[40] “The crime is GBH – the same as if you break someone’s leg with a hammer”.

Although it’s NOT GBH if somebody is hit from behind with a police truncheon?
http://www.anthonypainter.co.uk/2010/07/23/ian-tomlinson-and-the-rule-of-law/

41 – As a matter of fact, the Tomlinson case also goes to explain why there are so few prosecutions for reckless transmission of HIV. Despite pretty strong circumstantial evidence, it was determined that proving causation would not be possible, and that a conviction was therefore extremely unlikely. Unique circumstances, but a pretty pervasive problem for the CPS.

@3: apart from trashing this woman’s reputation

People who recklessly harm others deserve to have their reputations trashed.

People have a moral obligation not to recklessly or deliberately harm others’ health, and to co-operate with health authorities in reducing the spread of disease. If they don’t fulfil this obligation, they deserve to go to prison.

why is it a matter for the court if sexual behaviour is NOT being criminalised?

She deliberately or recklessly spread disease. It’s irrelevant (to me, at least) that she did it by having sex. What she did was roughly equivalent to a restaurant owner feeding people food that’s unfit for human consumption.

Very interesting blog. My own opinion is that the issue here is consensuality. If you KNOW you have a deadly STD like HIV, and engage in unprotected sex with someone, you ARE endangering that person, but more importantly, you are removing their capacity to make an informed decision. As such, I think it is a criminal act.

But fascinating article.

I see that sexually transmitted infections have it an all time high (482,700 known cases in 2009).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/25/sexually-transmitted-infections-hit-record-high

According to this item, “many studies have shown that young adults are more likely to have unsafe sex and that they often lack the skills and confidence to negotiate safer methods”, while “the peak age for a sexually transmitted infection is 19-20 for women and 20-23 for men”.
Alarmingly, significant numbers of young people are returning to clinics – about 10% of the 15- to 24-year-olds treated for a sexually transmitted infection will be re-infected within a year.

Going back to Tim J’s post [32] it may be that we have come full circle, “Professor Cathy Ison, a gonorrhoea expert at HPA’s centre for infections, said no new antibiotics were in the pipeline to treat the infection once cefixime “is no good”. She estimated the antibiotic may be effective against gonorrhoea for only another five years, although that time could shorten if the bacteria develops new methods of resistance”.

Perhaps the time is fast approaching for hiv to move over in the court room to allow for a much wide range of cases to be heard involving the sexual shenanigans of our hormonal youngsters – apparently many still do not understand (or more likely prefer to ignore) endless messages about safer sex?

@”the a&e charge nurse” #45:

“Perhaps the time is fast approaching for hiv to move over in the court room to allow for a much wide range of cases to be heard involving the sexual shenanigans of our hormonal youngsters – apparently many still do not understand (or more likely prefer to ignore) endless messages about safer sex?”

You really don’t get the point, do you?

The issue is deliberately – or recklessly – infecting others with a disease, in this case. It is not about being promiscuous; indeed it’s not even about sexual activity, save only that that was the method adopted by the subject of the original; article. Would you take the same view if the method was instead sticking an infected needle into dinner party guests as they arrived? If not – why not?

ooops – “in this case, HIV.”

[46] “You really don’t get the point, do you?” – recklessness has virtually become synonymous with sexual activity reflected in almost half a million REPORTED infections (there are various worrying estimates about prevalence of unreported cases of hepatitis, for example, amongst others).

Are you saying that the conditions which applied in the German case can only be applied in a mere handful of instances that have found their way into the media spotlight?

In any event a person who does not declare their hiv status is NOT the same as a deliberate attempt to infect somebody – your bizarre dinner party scenario is an example of this sort of vindictive intentionality.

When Nadja Benaissa had unprotected sex she was prepared to take a risk that tranmission would not occur (an entirely different matter to deliberate infection in my opinion) but then again her partner was also a risk taker if he did not to use a condom.
According to this item studies suggest that the risk of hiv transmission following vaginal intercourse between an infected woman and non-infected man is actually very low, occurring in about 1 in 200,000 cases (I am not familiar with the stats in this particular area so please correct me if this is wrong).
http://aids.about.com/od/hivaidsstats/f/infectionrisk.htm

In this respect Nadja Benaissa was no different from tens of thousands of other individuals infected with either chlamydia, papilloma, herpes, or indeed hiv who fail to declare their health status during the heat of the moment presumably because it might lower their chance of further success in the bedroom?

@a&e charge nurse #48:

“recklessness has virtually become synonymous with sexual activity reflected in almost half a million REPORTED infections (there are various worrying estimates about prevalence of unreported cases of hepatitis, for example, amongst others).”

I beg to differ. We are talking about a specific, legal, definition of recklessness. In English law, unless Benaissa knew, or deliberately closed her eyes to the likelihood that, she was HIV+, she could not be reckless. Simply knowing that she had the the same possibility as anyone else with an active (unprotected) sex-life of having contracted an STI would not be sufficient.

Having established that degree of knowledge, the law then (for recklessness) requires that she deliberately and unreasonably does some act knowing that there is a risk of infecting some other person; whether that act be having sex with them, or sticking a (used by her) needle into them is irrelevant to the issue of whether she was reckless as to any resultant HIV infection.

Even if she didn’t specifically deny being HIV+, but simply wasn’t asked and didn’t volunteer the information, the risk she is taking – of infecting another human being knowing that the preconditioon for infection – her own HIV+ status – existed is of a very different order to the risk taken by her unprotected partner, who did not know that she was HIV+, and (ii) trusted her at least to some extent to provide him with the information necessary to give informed consent to taking the risk.

If there are teenagers deliberately concealing their STI status so they can get their end away, and this results in infecting others who wouldn’t have engaged in unprotected sex if they’d know the circumstances, then you’re absolutely right, they should probably be in the dock too. The major difference though is that, since AIDS is invariably fatal even if treated, and gonorrhea is cleared with a course of antibiotics, the likelihood that one’s partner doesn’t care whether you are HIV+ is orders of magnitude lower than the likelihood that s/he doesn’t care whether you have gonorrhea.

Why are you so resistant to the idea that someone who deliberately harms another by infecting them with a fatal disease should face criminal charges?

@a&e charge nurse:

One other point – the chances of female to male transmission in unprotected heterosexual contacts are likely closer to 1 in 1,000:

http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102206158.html

[49] “Why are you so resistant to the idea that someone who deliberately harms another by infecting them with a fatal disease should face criminal charges?”.

I do not believe there was any intention to deliberately harm anybody – harm arose because Nadja Benaissa (and her unprotected partner) behaved in exactly the same way as half-a-million other individuals who sought attention from the NHS after ACQUIRING a sexually transmitted infection.

Sadly in this particular case the resulting infection carries with it grave consequences, but fining, imprisoning, or publicly shaming this lady will not alter this fact, neither is it likely to deter great swathes of the public from engaging in unprotected sex the minute an opportunity presents itself – the relentless rise in infection rates tends to bear this out.

It has long been known that the bedroom is a risky place – you pays your money, you takes your choice.

I see a verdict has been reached – fortunately the German court had the wisdom to avoid passing a custodial sentence.

Even so a German Aids-awareness group criticised the verdict, saying Benaissa’s partners also carried a share of the responsibility for becoming infected.
“If the responsibility for prevention is put entirely upon women and HIV-positive people, we are not recognising the combined responsibility of two people,” Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe spokeswoman Marianne Rademacher said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11097298

Nadja Benaissa also claimed in her defense that she had been advised ‘by doctors’ that the risk of hiv transmission was very low.

I see a Brit has been banged up for 14 months after infecting his partner with genital herpes
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026598/Man-jailed-14-months-giving-girlfriend-HERPES.html

Is it just the genital strain that gets you locked up or will oral transmission result in a bit of porridge as well – who’d have thought snogging could lead to such serious consequences?

I’m sure the likes of Lee Griffin and Robin Levett must have let out an involuntary whoop-whoop?

@a&ecn #53:

I’m offended that you think I read the Mail.

If that rag is to be believed, he was having sex with her for several months after having (i) infected her and (ii) denied being the source of the infection. He was lucky that the charge wasn’t rape for those occasions.

When you have worked out in your own mind the differences between “sexual behaviour”, common assault, and rape, come back to us.