Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucla-cs!HAMER%VCUVAX.BITNET@oac.ucla.edu
From: HAMER%VCUVAX.BITNET@oac.ucla.edu (ROBERT M. HAMER)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: "Is it attempted Murder"
Message-ID: <27676@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 2 Oct 89 14:42:00 GMT
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Lines: 31
Approved: aids@cs.ucla.edu
Archive-number: 1288

uvm-gen!jay@banzai.PCC.COM (Jay Schuster) writes:

>It seems to me that you can't be ``infected'' unless you let yourself
>be infected.  People who worry about others who go around ``infecting''
>people seem to me to be the ones who aren't changing their sexual
>habits because of AIDS.
>
>These are the people to worry about, to be locked up.
>
>*Everyone* is a carrier of HIV.  Or at least, that's what you should
>be thinking when you are having sex with someone.  And you shouldn't
>change your behavior when they tell you they are negative.

I have no reason to assume "Everyone" is a carrier of HIV.  I am married,
and have been for quite a long while.  I trust my wife not to have
extramarital sex, and she trusts me.  Neither of us has had a blood
transfusion.  I have no reason to assume she is a potential HIV carrier.

>
>It's your life.  No one is forcing you to have sex with this person.
>If you catch AIDS from them, I think it's pretty much your problem,
>not theirs.

This is pretty offensive, selfish, and harmful.  Fortunately, most people
these days know better.  This is analogous to saying that women who get
raped because they were dumb enough to walk down a deserted street deserve
it, and the rapist is not guilty of any crime.  It's like saying that
a mugger is guilty of no crime because the person being mugged placed
himself in a situation in which he was available to be mugged.

Stupidity is not a capital crime in our society.