Implications
Groups, including the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, intervened in the case. The group raised a number of potential implications of the decision, including:
- the prospect that criminalizing a failure to disclose one's HIV status will deter sexually active persons from getting tested for HIV in the first place,
- the potential of a negative impact on doctor-patient relationships if the courts open the door to a doctor being subpoenaed to testify as to the defendant's HIV status,
- lulling sexually active persons into a "false sense of security" that they need not practice safer sex since criminal law, rather than their own sexual behaviour, protects them from HIV risk.
The court also did not rule that any burden of proof exists whether the accused even knew how to protect their sexual partners. While practising safer sex is considered a valid defense, no burden of proof exists whether the HIV-positive partner had ever actually been educated in safer sex practices.
Generally, legal analysts and HIV educators viewed the decision as "the wrong tool for the job", suggesting that it was an attempt to use criminal law to resolve what is, first and foremost, a public health matter.
In a similar American case, Stephen Gendin, a vice-president of Poz, commented that
| “ | it would be one thing if we had perfect HIV prevention, and still there were people who were "acting irresponsibly". But we're not in that situation at all. I see the criminalization debate as a red herring — it diverts us from addressing the real problems with prevention and care. It allows us to feel like we're solving the crisis by going after these very specific and very weird situations when we're avoiding the much bigger problems that lead to most HIV transmissions. | ” |
Read more about this topic: R. V. Cuerrier
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