Re: AP bill & 'shared confidentiality'

[Guest guest]

Hi

Most arguments against HIV testing before marriage have been explored. At least

in this group - we seem closer to understanding and accepting that a law telling

people to test for HIV is not the complete road map to reducing hiv infections

within marriage. Great!

I would like to focus on one thought that has recurred several times over in the

emails on this topic.

They read like this - " On the question of privacy and rights of PLWH, one should

also consider that the right to privacy ends when some one else is under risk of

contracting the infection from the person who has HIV. Right to privacy is

certainly not a license to transmit the infection " .

Or they read like this " Freedom to PLWHA does not mean freedom to infect an

unsuspecting loving life partner. That is the bottom line. "

I sense an environment here that has not yet fully come to grips with their own

attitudes and fears of a positive person. These are valid fears - almost like

the fear of the unknown- but need to be explored further. We may be the ones

'educating' people - and so we first need to explore our own images of how/why

someone gets infected. We need to be careful and check whether our own attitudes

are fully reconstructed.

A lot has been said about counselling - and its quality is what determines

whether a person willingly infects another person. By the way, i don't know if

anyone has a foolproof method to ascertain willfull transmission. Just

guessing about such delicate and extremely complex matters often merely lead to

a more suspicious environment - as opposed to an enabling one.

As far as the right to privacy is concerned - it never 'ends'! There is a notion

of 'shared confidentiality' - where a positive person talks about his/her status

to small group of people for different reasons - one of the reasons for sharing

is to protect other people from infection. But this is a resultant of the

environment he/she is in and we are responsible for creating it.

The choice and the responsibility is really ours.

regards

Mona

E-mail: <plife@...>