(Editor’s note: Sec. Hillary Clinton, who has personally known people who have died from AIDS—she spoke at her friend Bob Hattoy’s memorial, for instance—told the International AIDS Conference on Monday: “If we’re going to beat AIDS, we can’t afford to avoid sensitive conversations, and we can’t afford not to reach the people who are at the highest risk.” Getting tested to know one’s status to get help and not pass on the disease has been a health care mantra for years. But some HIV/AIDS activists are now prompting “sensitive conversations” about the quietly increasing criminalization of HIV.
POZ founder Sean Strub (“Take the Test and Risk Arrest?”) and longtime HIV/AIDS journalist Todd Heywood, in particular, have been sounding the alarm. But now freelance journalist Terry Michael—a self-described “independent Washington journalist, who directs the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism, and who has covered the HIV-AIDS story at his personal web site,where he raises questions about HIV-AIDS theory”—raises some even more troubling questions about how the validity of HIV tests themselves are being questioned in courtrooms. In early July, Michael emailed me that he had covered two cases of “HIV Panic” in military courts. Here is Michael’s report (as sent) that may raise even more questions for “sensitive conversations” no one’s having. – Karen Ocamb)
Army acquits heterosexual soldier, convicts gay officer in ‘HIV panic’ cases, increasingly questioned by HIV-positive advocates
Just six weeks after an Army judge at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, acquitted a heterosexual soldier in a so-called “HIV panic” case, another military judge at Ft. Belvoir in Virginia found a gay Army officer guilty on all counts for not revealing his HIV status and engaging in unprotected sex.
