David crowe
for canada community police publication
(western edition)
march 2006
canada is getting into the habit of
throwing people in jail because they have
sex without revealing to their partner
that they are hiv-positive. Even when sex
is completely consensual, it is
reclassified as aggravated sexual assault,
or even homicide, under these
circumstances.
Late in 2005 a barrie, ontario woman plead
guilty to aggravated sexual assault and
was sentenced to house arrest for having
unprotected sex with a soldier without
telling him she is hiv-positive. [cbc,
2005a] at about the same time a bc man was
found guilty of the same crime under
similar circumstances [cbc, 2005b] in 2004
an hiv-positive winnipeg man was jailed
for two years because he did not tell his
lover that he was hiv-positive.
[mcintyre, 2004] a previous case in
manitoba resulted in an eight-year
sentence, two for each of four women the
man had sex with. In montreal in 2004, a
man got a little more than two years for
each of three women he had sex with.
[mckenzie, 2004]
not yet decided are the fates of other
canadians facing similar charges. Most
seriously of all, hamiltonian johnson
aziga might be convicted of first-degree
homicide because two women he had sex with
later died of aids. [herald, 2005]
trevis smith, a saskatchewan roughrider
football player was charged in british
columbia with aggravated sexual assault
after having consensual sex with women
without telling them he was hiv-positive.
[fong, 2005]
facing a record for the most such charges
is a windsor businessman charged more than
20 times with aggravated sexual assault,
once for each woman he had sex with.
[upi, 2004]
in order to treat these situations with
such severity it is obvious that police
and prosecutors must believe that:
1. Hiv is sexually transmitted.
2. Hiv tests are extraordinarily
accurate.
3. Hiv almost always leads to aids.
4. Aids is almost always fatal.
Hiv and sexual transmission
hiv is surprisingly difficult to transmit
sexually. The best estimates are that the
risk of hiv transmission through sex is
less than 1/1000 (actually a probability
of 0.0009, i.E. 0.09%) based on a ten
year california study. [padian, 1997]
someone would have to have sex with
someone who is hiv-positive almost 1,000
times to have better than even odds of
transmitting hiv!
People who are highly promiscuous, such as
prostitutes, stand even lower odds of
being infected, because relatively few of
their partners will be hiv-positive. If
10% of ‘johns’ were hiv-positive (more
than ten times higher than the average
rate throughout the population) they would
have to have sex almost 10,000 times
before the likelihood of becoming
hiv-positive reaches 50%.
It might surprise people who believe that
hiv is sexually transmitted to know that
prostitutes are not a group at risk for
hiv or aids unless they are iv drug users.
[potterat, 2004] further, there has not
been a single case of occupationally
acquired aids among surgeons and
paramedics in the united states, two
groups that are particularly at risk of
uncontrolled exposure to hiv-positive
blood. [cdc, 2000]
many people believe that the high rate of
hiv-positivity in africa is proof that hiv
can be transmitted sexually. However,
there have been a number of scientists who
have questioned this, noting that there
are a large number of anomalous cases, for
example monogamous hiv-positive women with
an hiv-negative husband instead and
hiv-positive children with hiv-negative
mothers. [gisselquist, 2002]
a recent survey in south africa showed
that 23.3% of black women are
hiv-positive, but only 6.4% of black men,
yet the same survey showed (to nobody’s
surprise), these same men are more
promiscuous than the women [pettifor,
2005]. This is precisely the opposite
pattern than one would expect.
The pattern of hiv-positivity then, does
not always look like a sexually
transmitted disease should. Either there
are a significant number of hiv cases that
are transmitted in a different fashion
(e.G. Dirty needles) or there are many
more false positive hiv tests than
currently estimated.
In either case it should give pause to
think: having sex with a man is not the
only way that a woman could become
hiv-positive. In the case of a false
positive hiv-test, neither sex nor viruses
may have anything to do with the
situation. A person cannot be guilty of
transmitting hiv if a person’s hiv test
is positive for some other reason, or even
if there is a reasonable doubt about how
the person became hiv-positive.
Hiv tests
hiv test manufacturers routinely claim
that their tests are more than 99%
accurate. They do this by comparing new
test kits against the performance of older
test kits. Original test kits were
checked by the number of people with aids
who tested positive.
The problem is that no hiv tests actually
test for a virus. So proving that test a
gives very similar results to test b does
not prove that either test is accurate.
The most common type of hiv test used is
the antibody test. In fact, most people
are diagnosed hiv-positive solely with the
use of two different types of antibody
tests, two or three elisa tests followed
by a single western blot. One problem
with antibody tests is that antibodies are
formed in reaction to a virus, not because
the virus is present. Only the assumption
that hiv is an incurable condition allows
antibody tests to be used to indicate
current infection rather than immunity (as
with most viral conditions). Furthermore,
antibody tests are subject to false
positive results due to reactions with
other viruses, diseases or compounds.
The only way that an hiv could be
validated would be through the
purification of the virus, and the
subsequent analysis of the genetic
material and proteins that it is made up
of. If 99% of people from which virus can
be purified test positive on antibody
tests, and 99% of people from which virus
cannot be purified test negative, then
(and only then) can genuine claims be made
about the accuracy of an hiv test.
Hiv purification has been attempted many
times, but it has always failed. Despite
the billions of dollars spent on hiv
research, hiv has never been purified, not
even once. Two analyses of what had
previously been claimed as ‘purified
hiv’, published in the same journal in
march, 1997, showed that at least 90% of
this material was impurities. In fact,
100% of the material being examined might
be bits and pieces of cells and not
originating from a virus. [bess, 1997;
glushchankof, 1997]
many people think that the association
between a positive hiv test and illness is
proof that the tests are accurate. But
this is not necessarily true because it
could be a variety of diseases processes
that result in the generation of
antibodies (e.G. Auto-antibodies to
proteins found in dying cells) and because
the diagnosis of a disease may cause the
prescription of drugs which, in the case
of hiv/aids, are highly toxic and have
well documented side effects which are
often debilitating and are sometimes fatal
(e.G. See aras.Ab.Ca/azt.Html and
aras.Ab.Ca/haart.Html).
Hiv=aids=death?
It is commonly claimed that everyone who
is hiv-infected will die. Well, apart
from the obvious fact that everyone,
whether hiv-positive or not, will
eventually die, the question is whether
hiv infection results in a high
probability of a significantly shortened
life.
This is very difficult to determine
because many groups of people who are
hiv-positive or have aids, such as iv drug
users or malnourished africans, have many
other health risks.
It is clear that hiv is not rapidly fatal
in most cases because the best estimates
are that it takes an average of 10 years
to go from hiv infection to aids, both in
america where aids drugs are available,
[munoz, 1995] and in poverty stricken
parts of africa where they are not
available. [morgan, 2002]
in fact, a special acronym, ltnp (long
term non-progressor) has been created for
people who are hiv-positive, healthy for
many years (often over a decade), have no
or minimal signs of immune system decline
and are not taking aids drugs.
One of these people is christine maggiore,
a los angeles woman, who was diagnosed
hiv-positive in 1992. Her case
illustrates both that hiv-positive people
do not always benefit from aids drugs and
also that hiv tests are sometimes
inaccurate. She has never used aids drugs
and remains in good health more than a
decade later. Her hiv tests have
sometimes been positive, sometimes
negative and sometimes ‘indeterminate’
(meaning that the results are ambiguous,
but are usually taken as meaning
hiv-negative). She founded an
organization, alive & well, as a
support group for people who want
science-based information from a broader
spectrum than that available from their
doctors. Many hiv-positive people feel
that she has saved their life by giving
them the information they need to stop
taking aids drugs or to never start.
Http://d
avidcrowe.Ca/scihealthenv/hiv-sex-jailtime
.Html
