Vertical HIV transmission should be excluded from criminal prosecution (2009)
Joanne Csete and colleagues argue that criminal laws on HIV transmission and exposure should be reviewed and revised to ensure that vertical transmission is explicitly excluded as an object of criminal prosecution. Scaling up PMTCT services and ensuring that they are affordable, accessible, welcoming and of good quality is the most effective strategy for reducing vertical transmission of HIV and should be the primary strategy in all countries.
Limit Cases: How and why we can and should decriminalise HIV Transmission, exposure and non-disclosure
ABSTRACT: Across the world, people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHA) face investigation, prosecution, conviction, and punishment if they transmit HIV to another person, expose others to the risk of HIV acquisition, or fail to disclose in advance their HIV positive status. This article seeks to explain why limiting the criminalisation of HIV is important and necessary; identifies some of the ways in which it has been, and might be, limited; and, finally, offers some reflections on whether there exists a principled limit to decriminalisation arguments (ie whether there are cases which, even if the general principles underpinning decriminalisation is accepted, justify state punishment). Drawing on recent international policy guidance, current scientific knowledge about HIV prevention and treatment, and research on the impact of criminalisation of PLHA, the article argues that decriminalisation is critical to eradicating HIV and should be a public health priority, that biomedical advances in prevention and treatment will assist the decriminalisation project but are insufficient in the absence of legal and criminal justice practice reform.