Girl Gives guy AIDS, Guy Beats Her (Hypothetical Scenario)

[Alyrium Denryle]

Eh, if you have HIV, you got a couple years before the pain starts, so even if you can't afford the drugs, better to live those out well and then swallow a bullet.

I would prefer the drugs, as a cure is sought, then once my immune system collapses either swallow the bullet, or OD on Morphine. Followed by being ground up burned, and mixed into a reef ball

[PainRack]

Ignoring the legal scenario, there's also AIDs prophaylxis, in which they dose you with AZT and other drugs so as to reduce your chances of getting HIV infection.


And I find it very difficult to think that any jury would convict someone of a crime like this, even if the person has committed an offence in the eyes of the law.

[Red]

I'm ignoring the obvious issues. For example, if she dies, how do we know his version of the story is correct? Thus, I am assuming something like the entire affair was captured on crystal clear motion picture-quality tape, etc.

Guy

Chances are pretty good, I think. Whether or not she was really infected, she made him believe she was. Having just been (mis)informed of the potential infection she deliberately subjected him to, his actions are... if not excusable, shall we say "understandable". I would expect some degree of jury nullification; and the jury is going to be more unwilling to accept higher charges than lower.

Whether the girl lives or dies affects, I believe, only the guy's chances for obtaining jury nullification. Legally, guy's charges could be changed; but since his intent (or lack thereof) was equivalent in either case, I don't think the result should matter.

To wit:

Still the man has no right to beat her or kill her. That's the reality. He has a somewhat mitigating defence in my opinion if he truly freaks out emotionally after she spills the beans immediately after the act, but this should only indicate a call for a degree of leniency, not exoneration.

~ ~ ~

Girl

If she's actually infected, then she attempted {murder/assault/whatever} and should be charged. The actual severity of the charge depends on the culture (both local as well as at the prosecutors' office), but I'm inclined to support the most severe charge possible. Whether or not she was successful shouldn't matter.

If she's not infected, she shouldn't be charged with much. She never forced him into any real danger.

~ ~ ~

As far as damages, I'm not particularly inclined to award her anything in either case. Whether she was infected or not, it's hard for me to come down hard on the guy since this is basically an entrapment.

On the flip side, out of more of a vague sense of fairness than a firm logical grip on morality, I'd be inclined to award the guy damages if she was infected (whether he was or not), and nothing if she wasn't.

_____________________________________________________

What is this, "the bitch had it coming" defence? You're giving out free walks for homicide over someone telling you something disturbing? Talk about moral leprosy. Going to cap this off by killing some homosexuals for getting on your nerves?
...
This entire scenario is repulsive and reeks of misogyny.

Beating someone severely, perhaps to death, for telling you something disturbing (you don't even know if its true at that point), excused? No.

1) The girl's action was not merely "telling you something disturbing", but in fact threatening AIDS infection. Whether or not she was infected is irrelevant. Similar to the scenario of shouting FIRE in a crowded theater while knowing the crowd will believe you and stampede out, the girl knows the guy may react as if he completely believes her. (Said sarcastically, it's not that she had it coming, so much as that she asked for it)

2) "Going to cap this off by killing some homosexuals for getting on your nerves?" Isn't that a bit overboard for a personal attack?

3) Why would you assault the scenario like that, calling it repulsive and reeking misogyny? Does he need to post another set of four situations, all with the guy doing the same to the girl, in order to be fair and balanced? Talk about Political Correctness Police, yeesh!

~ ~ ~

This is not the same as "I've poisoned you, you have twelve hours to life"
This is, "I've possibly(40%) infected you with a disease which will kill you five to forty years from now."

I reject with the fundamental issue in that statement. Those two situations should fundamentally be treated equally.

[Lord MJ]

I'm ignoring the obvious issues. For example, if she dies, how do we know his version of the story is correct? Thus, I am assuming something like the entire affair was captured on crystal clear motion picture-quality tape, etc.

Wonder what would happen if this wasn't captured on tape or anything, and the defendant told what had happened. Would the prosecutors believe him, would the jury. What if the girl survived, claimed she was raped and or that the guy gave her AIDS.

Assuming that things really did unfold as the OP described, how would a defense attorney defend the guy.

Is there a way to medically determine who gave AIDs to whom? Couldn't they verify via scientific means whether she was actually raped?

The big kicker is that if the girl told the guy she had AIDS, then she would've had to have been tested and some point in the past prior to the beating. So whether she lived or died, those records would hold the key. The family and the DA would probably move to have those records kept private, but if I were the Defense Attorney I would ahem, "put pressure" on the family (and the girl if she survived) to have the records unsealed, and I would also argue the fact the records are not in play causes automatic reasonable doubt.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Wonder what would happen if this wasn't captured on tape or anything, and the defendant told what had happened. Would the prosecutors believe him, would the jury. What if the girl survived, claimed she was raped and or that the guy gave her AIDS.

If she knows she has HIV, that means she has been tested, and if she tries to claim that, it becomes an issue at trial and her medical records can be accessed.

They dont even need to go that far, a simple phylogenetic analysis or chemical tests to check for HIV meds will show her claim to be false.

Is there a way to medically determine who gave AIDs to whom? Couldn't they verify via scientific means whether she was actually raped?

A phylogenetic analysis can show who gave HIV to whom. Especially because the testing records are on file and the course of HIV is well tracked...

As for the rape, in cases of violent rape there is a lot of genital tearing. So unless he stabbed her genitals, it is possible to say "she may not have been raped" Additionally, depending on how they hooked up, there could be witnesses to the consent that would cast doubt on a rape story, and she probably has other victims.

The family and the DA would probably move to have those records kept private, but if I were the Defense Attorney I would ahem, "put pressure" on the family (and the girl if she survived) to have the records unsealed

The records are also sealed due to Dr. Patient Privilege. However if the records become an issue at trial, IE she says "I did not know I had HIV" the door is opened and the records can be examined.

If I remember correctly.

[Imperial Overlord]

1) The girl's action was not merely "telling you something disturbing", but in fact threatening AIDS infection. Whether or not she was infected is irrelevant. Similar to the scenario of shouting FIRE in a crowded theater while knowing the crowd will believe you and stampede out, the girl knows the guy may react as if he completely believes her. (Said sarcastically, it's not that she had it coming, so much as that she asked for it)

Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater will get people immediately trampled to death, true or untrue. Telling me she's given me AIDS isn't comparable.

2) "Going to cap this off by killing some homosexuals for getting on your nerves?" Isn't that a bit overboard for a personal attack?

I'm not a fan of the "I'm upset so its okay I committed a crime" defence. Once you're allowed to get away with crimes because you are upset, in comes "homosexual panic defences" and other assorted bullshit that people have used to try to get away with not just assaulting but actually murdering homosexuals

3) Why would you assault the scenario like that, calling it repulsive and reeking misogyny? Does he need to post another set of four situations, all with the guy doing the same to the girl, in order to be fair and balanced? Talk about Political Correctness Police, yeesh!

Let's see it has evil, underaged female tricking a man into having sex with her and then telling him she's given him AIDS. That reeks of misogynistic male fear of being sexually trapped by an evil, exploitive female. Also the op creator saying "that I would find the guy justified in assaulting her" in his opening statement has an influence on my opinion.

[Red]

Wonder what would happen if this wasn't captured on tape or anything, and the defendant told what had happened. Would the prosecutors believe him, would the jury. What if the girl survived, claimed she was raped...

"He said, she said" games are messy. While proof is still a big deal, suddenly how the jury feels about each person makes a large difference as well. As any lawyer will tell you as well, juries are... odd.

Also, Alyrium, I didn't know about the tearing. Thanks for the info.

Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater will get people immediately trampled to death, true or untrue. Telling me she's given me AIDS isn't comparable.
...
Let's see it has evil, underaged female tricking a man into having sex with her and then telling him she's given him AIDS. That reeks of misogynistic male fear of being sexually trapped by an evil, exploitive female. Also the op creator saying "that I would find the guy justified in assaulting her" in his opening statement has an influence on my opinion.

First of all, you've missed the point. I'm not comparing the objective results of what happens when you trick a crowd into stampeding away from a fire with the results of when you trick a person into believing you've just let them dive headfirst (omgpun) into the AIDS pool.

Rather, what I am saying is that the person in the theater knows that they will be believed, and that X is a probable result--namely, that a stampede may occur. The girl in the situation knows that she will be believed, and that X is a probable result. In this case, reasonable people would admit that X could be "he's going to be really pissed and act in an angry fashion which may or may not be legal".

Lastly, the setup of the situation is merely a hypothetical setup. It's good that you can admit the OP's own opinion has the effect of clouding your perspective of the situation in itself. Still, I've been lurking here for some time, SDNet doesn't exactly seem friendly to your sort of PCmongering?

[Imperial Overlord]

Who's PC mongering you slandering son of a bitch? I find the scenario repulsive and misogynistic, complete with cackling evil female sex predator villain and a contrived "can I beat her to death and be allowed to go free?" scenario. I said the scenario sounds like an exercise in trying to find a way to beat a woman to death and go free, which is a purely subjective opinion the concurs with the facts of the scenario as outlined. That may not be what MJ was thinking, but that is my emotional reaction to the op as stated.

I've advocated neither punishment nor censure of any kind toward MJ, nor attacked him over it. I've merely stated my distaste for the scenario and that is fully within the bounds of this site.

[Red]

Libel, not slander ^___________^
If the scenario was two-way, with an equivalent "man tells woman he's infected, she beats him, etc", would you feel different? In any case, in the same way that his personal opinion sets off misogynist red flags for you, your readiness to perceive those red flags is itself a red flag for me.

Actually, let's actually bring this up. What happens in the reverse scenario, crew? For my side, none of my opinions change. Read my original post, but switch "guy" and "girl" in every instance.

[Imperial Overlord]

You forgot the "muhahahah, I'm underage" bit asshole.

The scenario reads like male paranoid fantasy and I said so. You can insert the red flag up your ass and turn it sideways.

The op would still sound silly and cartoonish reversed, "I'm underaged and by the way you have AIDS" is still over the top. My opinion on sentencing wouldn't change, which is jail them for the crimes they've committed, with mitigation if the underaged trickster could pass for older and emotional distress the beater would be under.

[ArmorPierce]

The records are also sealed due to Dr. Patient Privilege. However if the records become an issue at trial, IE she says "I did not know I had HIV" the door is opened and the records can be examined.

If I remember correctly.

Record for people with HIV is not dr. patient privilege. The doctors are required to notify a group about it so that they can keep tabs on the person.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The records are also sealed due to Dr. Patient Privilege. However if the records become an issue at trial, IE she says "I did not know I had HIV" the door is opened and the records can be examined.

If I remember correctly.

Record for people with HIV is not dr. patient privilege. The doctors are required to notify a group about it so that they can keep tabs on the person.

They do contact tracing yes, but the records cannot really be used by law enforcement. Medical records are privileged unless some very very stringent standards are met. Though they would be in this case.

[Rahvin]

A hypothetical legal situation that I was discussing a while ago, once again inspired by a Law and Order episode (I really need to stop watching L&O lol) but in this case the scenario is only loosely like to what actually happened in the episode. (Which featured a girl telling a guy that she had AIDS after they had sex and the guy freaking out and accidentally shooting her. The real case in the episode though revolved around an AIDS infected guy deliberately spreading the disease to women via sex, the girl was one of his victims.)

Lets suppose a girl and a guy are having sex. Afterwards (or even during the intercourse) they girl turns to the guy and says, "Guess what? I have AIDS, my life sucks and now your's does too!" In anger the guy immediately starts viciously beating the girl.

Now I wanted to examine the legal implications (and moral implications) in four different scenarios.

Consider the case of

1.) The girl was lying, it was just her cruel idea of a joke.
2.) The girl was telling the truth, she really had AIDS, she had sex with the guy with the intent of infecting him (as can be inferred by the statement, "my life sucks, and now your's does too!") The guy is infected as a result.

Now for both of those cases consider the case of

1.) The girls survives the guy's attack.
2.) The girl dies.

Now to make it even more interesting say the guy is in his 20s but the girl is 16 or 17 and lied about her age.

In each case what will be the legal consequences for both the guy and the girl (in the cases that she lived.)

I would argue that in any of the cases that girl really had AIDS, the guy should get a walk on all charges, if that was me or if I was the defense attorney I would strongly argue justification defense. And I would bring all the pressure to bear for the DA to drop all charges. In addition regardless of weather the guy gets off or is convicted of murder and statutory rape, if I was in that situation I would sue the girl (if she is still alive of course) and her family for every cent that they have. I don't usually believe in suing the pants off people, but I would definitely make an exception in that case.

In the case that she was just joking, well then the girl would certainly be a Darwin Award candidate and it would be great to remove her from the gene pool. But I doubt the guy would be able to get off on the charges in that scenario, but a good Defense Attorney should be able to plea it down to a lenient manslaughter sentence and call it a day.

What do you think?

This is disgusting.

You honestly believe that possible HIV infection is justification/excuse for assault or even murder?

I'm going to tell you a little story, jackass, because something along these lines actually happened to me.

I had sex with a girl, and she admitted to me after the fact that she has HIV. She knew at the time of intercourse, but was too afraid to follow through with her responsibility and inform me beforehand.

It wasn't an "I have AIDS and my life sucks, now yours does too" moment; she wasn't trying to intentionally infect me, but your little scenario still strikes pretty freaking close to home.

So let's think about this a little:

1) You don't give someone AIDS. You possibly infect someone with HIV.

2) HIV is not a terminal illness in First World nations - while healthcare for HIV patients still absolutely sucks here in the US (inability to get coverage, insanely expensive drugs needed), programs do exist, and you're not likely to die from HIV/AIDS, or even have HIV develop into full-blown AIDS at all.

3) Hopefully the guy was wearing a condom. If he wasn't, it's his own damned fault for not using protection. We've had conversations about this on the board before - if you're having unprotected sex, it's your fault if you get infected.

So, since the guy's life is not, in fact, in immanent danger, why the hell would he be justified or even excused for beating this girl and possibly even killing her? Temporary insanity because he was enraged? Fuck that - the girl is guilty of a crime if she intentionally tried to infect him, but it doesn't give him the right to take matters into his own hands. She wouldn't even be "getting what she deserved" - modern societies have rejected the concept of letting the victim take "justice" into their own hands for a reason. "I was really pissed, and I had a good reason to be pissed" isn't justification for assault or murder. Otherwise, I'd be justified in beating or killing dozens of people daily.

Yes, it really happened. Yes, I wore a condom, I'm not a complete moron. No, I'm not going into further detail because it would derail the thread. If you're curious, PM me.

[Red]

So, since the guy's life is not, in fact, in immanent danger, why the hell would he be justified or even excused for beating this girl and possibly even killing her? Temporary insanity because he was enraged? Fuck that - the girl is guilty of a crime if she intentionally tried to infect him, but it doesn't give him the right to take matters into his own hands. She wouldn't even be "getting what she deserved" - modern societies have rejected the concept of letting the victim take "justice" into their own hands for a reason. "I was really pissed, and I had a good reason to be pissed" isn't justification for assault or murder. Otherwise, I'd be justified in beating or killing dozens of people daily.

There is a difference between condoning citizens taking justice into their own hands, and understanding why someone would react in an objectively inappropriate manner.

[Rahvin]

So, since the guy's life is not, in fact, in immanent danger, why the hell would he be justified or even excused for beating this girl and possibly even killing her? Temporary insanity because he was enraged? Fuck that - the girl is guilty of a crime if she intentionally tried to infect him, but it doesn't give him the right to take matters into his own hands. She wouldn't even be "getting what she deserved" - modern societies have rejected the concept of letting the victim take "justice" into their own hands for a reason. "I was really pissed, and I had a good reason to be pissed" isn't justification for assault or murder. Otherwise, I'd be justified in beating or killing dozens of people daily.

There is a difference between condoning citizens taking justice into their own hands, and understanding why someone would react in an objectively inappropriate manner.

This has nothing to do with "understanding" why someone would be angry. Sympathy != ethical or legal justification. The OP asked about the ethical and legal ramifications of the man beating/possibly killing the girl after she attempts to infect him with HIV. Lord MJ then made the following statement:

I would argue that in any of the cases that girl really had AIDS, the guy should get a walk on all charges, if that was me or if I was the defense attorney I would strongly argue justification defense.

This statement from the OP is ethically disgusting and (as I understand the law) legally flawed. While I most certainly can understand why an individual could overreact in such circumstances (though shock and fear were my primary emotional responses, not murderous fury), my empathy has absolutely no relavence to whether such an overreaction would be ethically or legally justified. After all, I can understand why someone would physically assault someone for a personal insult, or why a person would try to kill a thief running away with his property; that understanding does not imply ethical or legal justification.

Homicide can be justified if it is done in self-defense, to prevent yourself or others from immanent harm. In Lord MJ's scenario, there is no immanent harm - any damage has already been done. The proper ethical and legal course of action would be to turn the girl over to the authorities. At no point does "beat the shit out of her" even enter the vicinity of an ethically or legally justifiable position.

Think of it this way:

A woman is being raped. While she is being attacked, there is certainly justification for deadly force - she is in immanent danger.

After the attack, after the attacker has escaped, she does not have ethical or legal justification to find her attacker and kill him - any damage has already been done, and there is no more immanent danger.

In the AIDS scenario, the man is not in any immanent danger - the sex has already concluded so any harm has already been done, and HIV is not even comparable to a threat of deadly force in the first place. It's a lifelong inconvenience with the possibility of death, a possibility with increasing likelihood in lesser-developed countries, but diabetes matches that description, too.

[Justforfun000]

Record for people with HIV is not dr. patient privilege. The doctors are required to notify a group about it so that they can keep tabs on the person.

Is this the case in every state in the US? I'm pretty sure that the law here is that way. At least when doing a "public" test. It's one of the reasons anonymous testing is offered because of the serious repercussions that can happen by going forth and getting a routine test by your doctor. It's such a tough issue when dealing with the grey issues of disease....obviously a certain degree of public safety vs. privacy is contentious, and because the unfortunate vector of transmission of this disease is primarily sexual, there is a huge stigma accompanying this scourge.

Because of many people's innate judgement on sex being immoral except in very narrow and limited channels, people infected with HIV are very often judged as "deserving" of it. This is in my opinion one of the largest facilitators of this plague. No other disease in history (except arguably Leprosy I suppose...), could be said to be so saddled with extraneous moral bullshit. This is, and will always be a serious impediment to prevention efforts.

[Justforfun000]

Rahvin Wrote:

I had sex with a girl, and she admitted to me after the fact that she has HIV. She knew at the time of intercourse, but was too afraid to follow through with her responsibility and inform me beforehand.

I'm so sorry you had to go through that. That must have been absolutely awful. I truly admire your eventual reconciliation with the circumstances and I'll get into that shortly...

3) Hopefully the guy was wearing a condom. If he wasn't, it's his own damned fault for not using protection. We've had conversations about this on the board before - if you're having unprotected sex, it's your fault if you get infected.

This is an extremely important point, and it's also been a fairly well discussed topic here in the gay village of Toronto. The entire issue is VERY grey shaded and while there is by no means a consensus of opinion on this, most people in the community have settled on a few basic guidelines.

1) Most people do feel that unless the person is extremely young, (and in some cases not legal to have sex), mentally handicapped or otherwise challenged regarding their ability to understand the risks of sexual contact, people have to be ultimately responsible for their own behavioral choices.

AIDS is not new. It's been around for over 25 years and realistically, there isn't a single person under the age of 5 I'll wager that has not heard some reference to it in the major civilized countries of the world. Every teenager living in these countries has undoubtedly been exposed to stories of the disease and most likely, (hopefully), have been actually TAUGHT the realities of the virus.

Keeping the above in mind, someone who chooses to have unprotected sex, REGARDLESS of circumstance short of full on commitment and/or marriage with the expectation of disease free beginnings and monogamy, is deliberately taking a chance. There is just as much possibility that a person who actually does NOT know they are HIV infected, is that way from past behaviour that they might have discounted, "forgotten", or mistakenly believed was not that risky.

The point here is that we can't always legislate to prevent fools from being fools. Adulthood is supposed to be earned by understanding and demonstrating responsibility, and people who pull the "Woe is me, I'm the totally innocent victim" in cases like these are far from blameless.

However, (and this is why I stated so emphatically that this issue is so grey...), a person with HIV in MOST cases should be morally and legally bound to disclose before sexual relations.

But here's where exceptions to the rules abound...like it or not, public cruising for guys is something that is done by a portion of the gay community. Whether it's parks or bathrooms, or an "approved" place like bathhouses, it happens. In anonymous situations like these, very little conversation or introduction is done as a rule and so people willingly engaging in bareback sex under those circumstances should be immediately dismissed as choosing the risk.

All in all in a perfect world, smart sexual behaviour and full disclosure would be par for the course and this plague would be on it's way out the door because of conscientious and consistent behaviour, but that's not reality.

We're imperfect human beings and the best we can do is find the most practical and ethical solution to these dilemmas.

[Alyrium Denryle]

1) Most people do feel that unless the person is extremely young, (and in some cases not legal to have sex), mentally handicapped or otherwise challenged regarding their ability to understand the risks of sexual contact, people have to be ultimately responsible for their own behavioral choices.

As a counterpoint, when we are discussing social systems and possible ways to limit the spread of disease, we also have to realize two things:

1) The ethical systems we use are ill-suited to dealing with the reality of infectious diseases. In biomedical ethics for example, the focus is on patient autonomy and individual rights(except of course for the right to die... fucking hypocrits) which are ill suited to dealing with communicable illnesses where the decision affects more than the patient and their immediate friends and family. By extension the system we have put in place to deal with possible outbreaks is ineffectual.

2) You can look at this one of two ways. Either people are idiots and will not do what is really in their best interest, or that they evolved a sense of invulnerability when young in order to encourage them to take risks that will maximize their fitness. Either way, the end result is the same.

There are three uses of the word "responsible" One is causal responsibility. IE. "Your actions make you responsible for our glorious victory" and the other is proactive personal responsibility. IE. You need to take responsibility for your actions. The last is retroactive moral responsibility IE. Your actions make you morally responsible for the deaths of eight people

When you say "people have to be responsible for their behavior" you need to specify which one of these you mean. I think it reasonable that people are (as opposed to should be, we can quibble about should all day, what matters is what is and what actually can be, as ought implies can) causally responsible, and may take retroactive moral responsibility for their actions. However I dont think it reasonable that we can, as a matter of policy, rely on people to take proactive personal responsibility for their behavior. Individuals might do this (or at least think they are... most en situ decision making is done subconsciously and rationalized after the fact, what is really happening is their subconscious brain does a risk-benefit analysis and is more biased toward avoiding risk) but to rely on it as a matter of policy is a mistake.

AIDS is not new. It's been around for over 25 years and realistically, there isn't a single person under the age of 5 I'll wager that has not heard some reference to it in the major civilized countries of the world. Every teenager living in these countries has undoubtedly been exposed to stories of the disease and most likely, (hopefully), have been actually TAUGHT the realities of the virus.

Education only goes so far, essentially telling the brain what the real risk is (as opposed to its ignorant estimation of what the risk is) and thus bias its decision making toward risk aversion.

What makes the majority of the decision is still a combination of genetics (predisposition toward risk aversion vs risk taking, inherited from the parents) and condition (phenotypic plasticity, in good conditions risk taking is bad, the benefits of risk taking are low. In poor conditions risk taking is good.

To illustrate this I will use tadpoles.

Say you have an artificial pond that is resource rich, but also has predators. In these environments, tadpoles (provided there is no gene flow from populations without predators which changes the gene ratios, I will get into that in a second) will not take risks. They will stay hidden away from predators, there is lots of food so they can afford to do this. They grow slower, but their fitness is increased as a result.

If there is not a lot of food, the tadpoles cant afford to do this. In order to feed themselves they have to come out of their hiding places more regularly and forage for longer, exposing themselves to predation.

All "educating" the tadpoles by exposing them to predation (such as chemical cues from a bluegill feeding on another tadpole) does is depress the rate of predation by teaching them how to detect and avoid predators a bit better when they are foraging, but they still have to leave the PVC tube and go scrape algae off the rocks in the tank.

The same applies to humans. People in impoverished areas live fast and die young. They are the descendants of people who were not risk-averse, and in conditions that favor risk-takers. This is why the crime rates in impoverished areas are higher, why there is a higher incident of teen pregnancy, drug use and sexually transmitted disease.

The root reason teenage girls in these environments have lots of kids early is because

A) They have more kids than they can reasonably support as insurance because the conditions themselves are poor and mortality is high

B) Because if they dont have kids young there is a good chance they wont live long enough to assist their own offspring in child-rearing, which with absentee fathers, can often be very bad for said grandchildren. Did I mention that poverty also causes a lot of dead-beat dads because the conditions are such that it does not pay off for them reproductively to stick around and actually invest in offspring? Well I suppose I just did.

The high rates of early copulation by females, with males who sleep around spreading their seed everywhere they can, results in more disease. The means by which females select their mates also leads to higher crime rates, because they go after the most risk-prone males because they have the best genes for the environment. This leads to dominance contests (fights) high rates of risky resource acquisition (property crime) and also high rates of rape.

The realities of natural selection are very strong in this situation, and they outshine natural selection. All education does in these situations is raise the bar for risks that individuals are willing to take, which will lead in a few generations (provided there is any genetic variation in the system and it is not all phenotypic plasticity) to individuals who are more prone to risk-taking, until the risk of HIV and other lethal STIs outweighs the benefits and an equilibrium is reached.

Keeping the above in mind, someone who chooses to have unprotected sex, REGARDLESS of circumstance short of full on commitment and/or marriage with the expectation of disease free beginnings and monogamy, is deliberately taking a chance.

Why yes... yes they are.

The point here is that we can't always legislate to prevent fools from being fools. Adulthood is supposed to be earned by understanding and demonstrating responsibility, and people who pull the "Woe is me, I'm the totally innocent victim" in cases like these are far from blameless.

On the other hand, as a matter of policy if we want to solve the problem (if you consider the results of natural selection a problem... something I take no position on *invokes Non-Overlapping Magisterium in a facetious sort of way* ) you have to shift the selective pressure away from risk-taking. You can either increase the risk by legislating punishments for disease spreaders, or you can make risk-taking itself non-beneficial. You can do the latter through wealth distribution, food aid, educational opportunities anything you can to make actual risk taking less beneficial by increasing the resource base and increasing life-expectancy.

A Note On The Gay Community: The same rules apply. The conditions GLBT people face mimic environments where risks are beneficial, which is why you see more sexual risk taking such as bath-houses etc. The fact that their real fitness is zero does not matter because their brains do not know that.

We're imperfect human beings and the best we can do is find the most practical and ethical solution to these dilemmas.

I have to disagree here. Perfection relies on an a priori notion, a purpose driven one, of what ought to be. The word Ought implies that what should be, can be (example: When you say "you should have done X" you imply that X was an actual realistic possibility) And my position is that given the conditions no other results are really possible on a broad scale. Thus to say we are imperfect is useless. What you really want to say is that we are well-adapted the sub-optimal conditions. IE. the system is not what you want.

Then again, I am a bit of an evolutionary determinist.

[Solauren]

Personal stand-point, original post / thread starter

Should have used a condom, you idiot. However, I can see why you reacted the way you did. You're still an idiot, and now a scumbag for beating the crap out of someone / killing someone, over something they are merely claiming.

Legal Stand-point.
Legal Defense, Two Words: Temporary Insanity.

[Lord MJ]

You forgot the "muhahahah, I'm underage" bit asshole.

The scenario reads like male paranoid fantasy and I said so. You can insert the red flag up your ass and turn it sideways.

The op would still sound silly and cartoonish reversed, "I'm underaged and by the way you have AIDS" is still over the top. My opinion on sentencing wouldn't change, which is jail them for the crimes they've committed, with mitigation if the underaged trickster could pass for older and emotional distress the beater would be under.

The thread was/is about discussing what would or should happen in such a scenario. The whole thing about it being "A Male Paranoid Fantasy" is completely irrelevant to discussing the issue at hand.

And it's not that cartoonish. The motive for such a crime (the girls) is actually quite plausible. Girl gets AIDS, slips into depression as a result of her condition and decides to share her pain with others. Hell it could be even possible that before]/i] she was infected she was a paragon of virtue. The guy's actions while not justified are actually pretty plausible given the scenario described.

Look, in the recently months I've read about parents freezing their newborn baby in the freezer, an underage girl serialy decieving older men into committing statutory rape, a woman killing ALL of her ex-husbands, and most recently a man brutally beating a toddler to death. The scenario I described is perfectly plausible compared to the above cases.

Do you think the writers of all the legal dramas out there come up with these scenarios off the top of their heads?

[Justforfun000]

Aly Wrote:

There are three uses of the word "responsible" One is causal responsibility. IE. "Your actions make you responsible for our glorious victory" and the other is proactive personal responsibility. IE. You need to take responsibility for your actions. The last is retroactive moral responsibility IE. Your actions make you morally responsible for the deaths of eight people

When you say "people have to be responsible for their behavior" you need to specify which one of these you mean. I think it reasonable that people are (as opposed to should be, we can quibble about should all day, what matters is what is and what actually can be, as ought implies can) causally responsible, and may take retroactive moral responsibility for their actions. However I dont think it reasonable that we can, as a matter of policy, rely on people to take proactive personal responsibility for their behavior. Individuals might do this (or at least think they are... most en situ decision making is done subconsciously and rationalized after the fact, what is really happening is their subconscious brain does a risk-benefit analysis and is more biased toward avoiding risk) but to rely on it as a matter of policy is a mistake.

It took me a bit to understand what you were saying here but I think I got it now. I think what you're saying is that the personal proactive responsibility that would encompass a situation where they have to make a decision whether or not to have unsafe sex without necessarily even asking whether the other person might be positive, is not something you feel we should expect people to be held resposible for? If that is what you're saying, then I can't agree with this because in my mind this is simply another way of saying "the devil made me do it". Whether evolutionary biology has a place in this is certainly debatable, and for the sake of social understanding we should learn every facet of possible influence.

But still, we ARE free willed creatures and we make choices. Granted many are stupid, but if they choose to make a stupid choice, knowing full well that there IS a risk then they are still partially culpable.

The reason this has become such a big argument lately is because this disease is piggy backed by sex. Humans tend to suspend a great deal of communication while they are actively beginning physical relations. How many times have people done the deed and AFTER said "I should have told you....I have a boyfriend..", or "I got carried away and really would have liked to have discussed our future before going this far..", etc. Because of the nature of sex being powerfully physical, sometimes humans almost carry a small sense of embarassment that they are responding so animal-like towards another human. Do you see what I mean? All of these idiosyncracies of sexual behaviour greatly influence these situations and most people are on the other spectrum of logical at the moment their lust is rampant, and many times sexual encounters start happening spontaneously so there may have been no lead in that brought up any related subjects. Many people fling caution to the winds although they KNOW better, but they take the chance like it's a lotto. So both sides falls victim to their feelings and sometimes might not make the brightest decisions and regret it later.
This is a very dangerous attitude and this is why I believe that they HAVE to be held accountable so the message can be driven home. We should be drilling it into people's head that it will be your OWN fault if you catch something.


I ultimately see this as only being dealt with comprehensively by making people EQUALLY responsible for their behavior. In the specific examples of people choosing unsafe sex with anonymous people, they should not expect to be treated as "victimized". This is totally counterproductive to prevention. We have to tell people, "This is YOUR body and your life and any decisions you freely make that put it at risk of disease or illness, are your fault and you shouldn't be pointing fingers unless you're looking in a mirror."

The realities of natural selection are very strong in this situation, and they outshine natural selection. All education does in these situations is raise the bar for risks that individuals are willing to take, which will lead in a few generations (provided there is any genetic variation in the system and it is not all phenotypic plasticity) to individuals who are more prone to risk-taking, until the risk of HIV and other lethal STIs outweighs the benefits and an equilibrium is reached.

But the main point here to remember is that no matter how influential natural selection, environment, religion or any other major factor in the person's life is, their free will is supreme. We make conscious choices all the time and to engage in willing sexual intercourse is one of them. So a completely free-willed choice made by an adult that knows potential consequences of said behaviour, is automatically claiming responsibility for their action.

On the other hand, as a matter of policy if we want to solve the problem (if you consider the results of natural selection a problem... something I take no position on *invokes Non-Overlapping Magisterium in a facetious sort of way* ) you have to shift the selective pressure away from risk-taking. You can either increase the risk by legislating punishments for disease spreaders, or you can make risk-taking itself non-beneficial.

Ultimately I believe that the most effective method would be to focus on stopping the non-infected from taking chances. Lets be realistic. All it would take to truly stop this disease would be for all uninfected people to A) Always use protection in any kind of non-monogamous sexual relationship

and/or

B) Remain in a monogamous relationship with another uninfected individual

This is the most important strategy to keep people from spreading the disease further. The people uninfected NEED to be responsible for protecting their own health and therefore proecting others including any offspring they might wish to have in the future.

Obviously I don't believe the infected person should be allowed to just sleep around and deliberately keep their mouth shut if they are actually dating people on a serious level. But the people who are uninfected have to look after themselves first and foremost. They shouldn't count on "the law" to do so. It's after the fact and only about retribution, not prevention or cure.

A Note On The Gay Community: The same rules apply. The conditions GLBT people face mimic environments where risks are beneficial, which is why you see more sexual risk taking such as bath-houses etc. The fact that their real fitness is zero does not matter because their brains do not know that.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. Their real fitness is zero? Can you elaborate?

[Rahvin]

The reason this has become such a big argument lately is because this disease is piggy backed by sex. Humans tend to suspend a great deal of communication while they are actively beginning physical relations. How many times have people done the deed and AFTER said "I should have told you....I have a boyfriend..", or "I got carried away and really would have liked to have discussed our future before going this far..", etc. Because of the nature of sex being powerfully physical, sometimes humans almost carry a small sense of embarassment that they are responding so animal-like towards another human. Do you see what I mean? All of these idiosyncracies of sexual behaviour greatly influence these situations and most people are on the other spectrum of logical at the moment their lust is rampant, and many times sexual encounters start happening spontaneously so there may have been no lead in that brought up any related subjects. Many people fling caution to the winds although they KNOW better, but they take the chance like it's a lotto. So both sides falls victim to their feelings and sometimes might not make the brightest decisions and regret it later.
This is a very dangerous attitude and this is why I believe that they HAVE to be held accountable so the message can be driven home. We should be drilling it into people's head that it will be your OWN fault if you catch something.

Don't forget the other side - in my case, the girl I had sex with really liked me, and was afraid I'd tell her to leave and never speak to her again if she told me. Rational thought would have told her that, if I were such a person, she wouldn't want to speak to me anyway. Human relationships don't only cause people to "throw caution to the wind," they also carry irrational fear of rejection. Certainly those with STDs, particularly ones like HIV that are potentially lethal in addition to being a significant lifelong inconvenience, face a much greater fear of rejection based on their disease. Many HIV-positive people find that they even lose friendships, not just opportunities for relationships. Hope for a caring relationship with another human being can let that fear win out even more than the "I have a boyfriend" situation.

Honestly, we shouldn't even be encouraging only personal responsibility. I use protection not only for myself but also for my partner. We should be drilling into people's heads that you don't even know whether you have something unless you've just been tested - and let's face it, the vast majority of the population has never been tested for HPV or Herpes, let alone HIV. Hell, sometimes doctors even fail to test. The girl I know actually had to insist that her doctor test her for HIV - she was in such a low-risk group (heterosexual, upper-middle-class, etc) that the thought never even occurred to her doctor, and he thought it was silly even when it was suggested. Personal responsibility is insufficient - if one party fails to take the responsibility of using protection, the other party should insist on it, even if both parties believe they are "clean."

[Justforfun000]

Don't forget the other side - in my case, the girl I had sex with really liked me, and was afraid I'd tell her to leave and never speak to her again if she told me. Rational thought would have told her that, if I were such a person, she wouldn't want to speak to me anyway. Human relationships don't only cause people to "throw caution to the wind," they also carry irrational fear of rejection. Certainly those with STDs, particularly ones like HIV that are potentially lethal in addition to being a significant lifelong inconvenience, face a much greater fear of rejection based on their disease. Many HIV-positive people find that they even lose friendships, not just opportunities for relationships. Hope for a caring relationship with another human being can let that fear win out even more than the "I have a boyfriend" situation.

Excellent point, and one that essentially supports my basic point. Emotionalism will end up causing MANY of these situations to be possible. Logical behaviour cannot be expected to rule the day when dealing with sexual behaviour. But this is precisely why everyone has to watch their own ass very carefully.

Personal responsibility is insufficient - if one party fails to take the responsibility of using protection, the other party should insist on it, even if both parties believe they are "clean."

In general I agree with you. There are extenuating circumstances for people in the gay community however. Many poz people sero-sort and have unprotected sex with others in the same boat. They don't have to worry about the worst thing happening to them, it's already there. So I certainly can't blame those who are already positive for enjoying bareback sex with each other since it's at the very least the one positive thing they can take away from the curse...one certainly can't expect them to never enjoy condomless sex for the rest of their life. It's only important that they keep it within the "group".

In the bathhouse culture here it's been talked about throughout the community and it's a very common thing to find poz people hooking up for sex together. This is more then fine, it's IDEAL actually, but this is where the personal responsibility comes into being. People don't often talk when having anonymous sex in bathhouses and the grand majority of the time the only people that are actually playing bare, are already poz. it's the ones who are NOT that are allowing themselves to become a victim of infection. This is not something that is going to be solved by trying to criminalize the infecter and exonerating the willing "victim".

People are not always going to disclose. It's a fact. Many will (rightly) assume that if the other person is barebacking with a complete stranger, then they are already hiv positive. If they are not, they sure as hell will be soon.

Now in any average dating situation, this doesn't apply whatsoever. You should disclose before unsafe sex. Period.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It took me a bit to understand what you were saying here but I think I got it now. I think what you're saying is that the personal proactive responsibility that would encompass a situation where they have to make a decision whether or not to have unsafe sex without necessarily even asking whether the other person might be positive, is not something you feel we should expect people to be held resposible for? If that is what you're saying, then I can't agree with this because in my mind this is simply another way of saying "the devil made me do it". Whether evolutionary biology has a place in this is certainly debatable, and for the sake of social understanding we should learn every facet of possible influence.

Close, but not quite

Reality Trumps Theory

Also Reality Trumps Wishful Thinking.

We cannot expect people to act responsibly because empirically they do not. When you make policy, you cannot base policy on what should be, or what you want to be. You have to make policy based upon what IS. Is this ideal? No. But neither is the world we live in. We have a lot of expectations about what should be, or what could be. But the reality is, most of those expectations never pan out.

But still, we ARE free willed creatures and we make choices. Granted many are stupid, but if they choose to make a stupid choice, knowing full well that there IS a risk then they are still partially culpable.

See, I largely reject classical free will... I relies on a faulty Philosophy of Mind in which there is a "self" the decisions of which are conscious and un-caused. By which I mean, are self causing and not the result of other forces. An example of how this concept is false goes as follows.

You do not actually choose who you are attracted to. You see them, hear them, possibly smell them (Oh god do I love man-scent) and interact with them and you either are attracted to them or you are not. You dont sit back and deliberate on the matter. The decision is made in the background (better explanation below... )

How many times have people done the deed and AFTER said "I should have told you....I have a boyfriend..", or "I got carried away and really would have liked to have discussed our future before going this far.."

Kinda proves my point actually...

There is not a whole lot of communication, because at the time, they dont care. A person who cheats on a spouse is doing so because they are programmed to by selection. Women are actually more likely to ovulate when cheating, and there is cryptic choice that biases sperm competition... one of those mechanisms is the fucking female orgasm, which they are more likely to have when having sex with a one night stand or extra-pair partner...

Because of the nature of sex being powerfully physical, sometimes humans almost carry a small sense of embarassment that they are responding so animal-like towards another human.

No... it is a risk aversion behavior. The proximate behavior you see is shame, and embarassment. However the ultimate cause is evolution. Saying that they have a partner is a surefire way to get someone you are attracted to to reject you. Same with disease disclosure. From the point of view of a biologist, it is against someone's reproductive best interest to disclose information about their sex lives, large parts of the reproductive strategy of both sexes is to disguise their sexual activity to fool others.

Males boost their status by boasting about conquests that dont exist and saying they dont need to jerk off, when in reality every male masturbates and in fact depending on whether or not they are in a relationship of expecting infidelity have an optimum masturbation frequency (optimizes the ratios of different types of sperm for fighting offensive or defensive sperm wars)

Females use variable ovulation times, receptive vs non-receptive periods, orgasms, and also optimal masturbation (alters composition of cervical mucous to make it more or less passable to sperm)

And all of that is done sub-consciously. There is a reason people get caught up in the moment and decide to have sex without a condom, there is a reason they do not disclose other relationships or possible diseases. Because doing so, because the deceit or omission maximizes fitness, and they dont even know they are doing it.

Trying to actually fight that, wag your finger and say "you shouldnt do that" or "you should have been proactive and not done that" is like trying to swim up angel falls. The best you can do is work around it, or engineer systems that minimize the fallout.

You cant fight evolution.

But the main point here to remember is that no matter how influential natural selection, environment, religion or any other major factor in the person's life is, their free will is supreme. We make conscious choices all the time and to engage in willing sexual intercourse is one of them. So a completely free-willed choice made by an adult that knows potential consequences of said behaviour, is automatically claiming responsibility for their action.

Natural Selection created what semblance we have as free will. Any consequence of free will that would cause someone to act against their reproductive success would be selected out. The guy who's free-will regularly "reigned supreme" over what was in his reproductive best interests would leave fewer offspring than the guy who's "free will" did not.

When you last had a one night stand (if you have) did you really sit and ponder over the relative merits of mating with the individual you did? Or did you know more or less immediately whether you wanted to mate with that individual? When the person gently urged you, say, by rubbing your inner thigh, did you make a little checkmark in the "pro" column?

Probably not. The decision was made in the background, beneath your deliberative conscious mind. To use an unrelated example:

Your TV set has a screen. The image on the screen is what you see, it is what you perceive. But it does not exist on its own. The image on the screen is the result of background processes.

In this your consciousness, what you perceive as being your decision making, is really just the result of processes running in the background. Even if you DO actually weigh the pros and cons when you decide to mate, how, without quantification, do you make the decision? How do you prioritize the factors?

I see this line of thought too often to stand it anymore. People accept the reality of evolution, but not the consequences, they somehow, with this "free will trumps evolution" bullshit, think they are special. They think evolution does not apply. I cant think of any other term for it but Social Creationism.

Your whole line of thought is an artifact of Cartesian Dualism, and that I will not abide

This is the most important strategy to keep people from spreading the disease further. The people uninfected NEED to be responsible for protecting their own health and therefore proecting others including any offspring they might wish to have in the future.

That would make sense if it was a realistic expectation. But it is not Saying people "need" to do something and then structuring policy around it is not going to solve problems. What will solve the problem is accepting the empirical reality of the situation, and that is that people are not rational actors. A lot of the actual policy will be the same. Comprehensive sex ed for example is a good idea because the information, that otherwise would not be there, goes into processing risk. A person who has just sorta heard of HIV is not going to give the risk of catching it much credence until they see the effects, which sex ed can do. It will counter bad information with good information, and considering myths of condom effectiveness....

You get what I mean.

On the other hand, a lot of the policy would be different. How we treat medical records may need to change. We could not settle for education, we would want to decrease the rate of extra-pair copulation etc etc etc.

Obviously I don't believe the infected person should be allowed to just sleep around and deliberately keep their mouth shut if they are actually dating people on a serious level. But the people who are uninfected have to look after themselves first and foremost. They shouldn't count on "the law" to do so. It's after the fact and only about retribution, not prevention or cure.

Agreed, on the other hand, those that knowingly spread HIV to others ought be removed from the mating pool. And to do this, we need a way to prove that an individual knew they had HIV. Under current US law that is just about impossible unless they parade it from the fucking rooftops.

This is where a new way to deal with medical records comes in. At least when it comes to infectious disease. The ability to contact trace every single new case of HIV (and other diseases) would come in really handy as well

It would also require... the actual political will required to engage in massive variance reduction (read: pro-active social programs)

I don't really understand what you're saying here. Their real fitness is zero? Can you elaborate?

The Fitness Coefficient is the population average of the reproductive success of a phenotype, all other phenotypes held constant. Individual fitness is a persons individual reproductive success.

I cant really write the equation here, but it is the relatedness coefficient of the individual's offspring (usually .5) times the number of offspring. Plus the relatedness coefficient of the relative whom they assist to produce multiplied by the number of said relatives.

Zero fitness is an oversimplification, gay people on the whole dont really reproduce much (naturally) but they still help relatives reproduce.

[Justforfun000]

Gawd. It's so incredibly complicated when you get into the serious biology equation. I really appreciate your learning as part of the debate here because it shows quite clearly that complex problems almost always have very complex reasons.

From what you've presented, I have even more reason to bemoan sex ed and our potential prevention efforts in dealing with veneral diseases. I wasn't giving enough importance to the biological and emotional impact. If you are correct, this is MUCH more influential then I dreamed.

What the hell are we going to do?? The other part of this equation is the consideration that people are not just deceitful or weak, but actually hindered drastically by evolutionary motives that are acted upon before thought or reason is even able to be brought up.

I suspect that you are probably more pessimistic then the average person and expect this pandemic to get a WHOLE hell of a lot worse before it gets better..

Agreed, on the other hand, those that knowingly spread HIV to others ought be removed from the mating pool. And to do this, we need a way to prove that an individual knew they had HIV. Under current US law that is just about impossible unless they parade it from the fucking rooftops.

The problem here is not the disease...it's the STIGMA attached to it. Until people are not treated as "deserving" of it by any stretch of the imgaination, it will always be a privacy vs. disclosure issue.

It's disgusting that the United States has put a total blanket ban on any HIV positive people from entering their country. Nice message! You're diseased, too dangerous to be trusted to keeo your infection to youself, and consequently not welcome in our country.

These kind of judgemental viewpoints along with relgious bullshit subtly (or blatantly) hinting that any sex you have outside their perfect framework is sin and deserving of punishment, continues to push the openness of HIV efforts into privacy demands.

It's a VERY serious problem and it has to be seriously addressed and corrected or HIV will continue to devastate mankind. We may get lucky and stumble across a vaccine or even an extremely effective treatment, but we can't live our lives assuming this. As it stands now, those with HIV MIGHT live a relatively normal life span, but the incidence of cancer as one example, is much higher in POZ people. As effective as we have become in turning this fatal disease into a chronic manageable one, we still have not come close to a true 'cure', and that is the real holy grail.

Tough, tough issue.