By Megan McLemore,J.D.,L.L.M.
Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch
(originally posted at Salon.com)

With headlines like "Obama Administration Promoting the Transmission of AIDS" and "The Justice Department Wants You to Get AIDS and Die," there has been more heat than light in some of the responses to the news that the U.S. Department of Justice may sue the South Carolina Department of Corrections over its segregation of HIV-positive prisoners.  Why is the notion that HIV-positive prisoners should have the same housing and work release options as convicted murderers so controversial?  And why is the notion that HIV is a mark of extreme dangerousness and death still so widely accepted?

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By Joanna Cuevas Ingram, CHLP Summer 2010 Legal Intern, U.C.- Davis School of Law, Class of 2012

CHLP hosted the very first U.S.-based electronic forum for HIV-positive women and their advocates last month, and learned a lot in the process.One thing we learned: the E-forum is a promising tool for getting more voices of people living with HIV into the mix that influences what advocates and government officials prioritize on their behalf.

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By Catherine Hanssens
Executive Director, CHLP

Comprehensive reviews of the newly-released National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) are still to come, although certain themes have emerged in the first reactions of national AIDS organizations. We consider what the NHAS has to say on several issues: criminalization of HIV, stepped-up enforcement of existing civil rights laws, expanded access to legal services to help with enforcement, and prisoners' rights. Not only are these issues a central part of fighting HIV in the US, at least one has the added benefit of costing little or nothing to address.
 

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By Julie Turkewitz
Staff Writer, Housing Works

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's decision to use a state law allowing civil commitment of dangerous sex-offenders to keep Nushawn Williams in prison  — despite Williams' having served his full 12-year-term — has set off alarm bells for AIDS advocates and civil rights experts.

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by Joseph Sonnabend, M.D.

One of the first physicians on the front lines of AIDS clinical care comments on the meaning and importance of informed consent in the push for earlier use of antiretroviral therapies, and laments the absence of activists who fought to safeguard it.

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By Cynthia Knox
Deputy Director, HIV Law Project

When even an HIV-savvy person treats a partner's undisclosed HIV as grounds for a lawsuit, sex can be exceptionally risky for those living with HIV.

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by Margo Kaplan
CHLP Director of Planning and Research

What distinguishes parents—and in particular women—living with HIV from other parents managing chronic medical conditions is not their illness, but rather an environment of stigma and discrimination that can compromise both their legal rights and their medical care.

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by Catherine Hanssens
CHLP Executive Director

ABC may think they scored with yet another salacious tale of an AIDS monster ruining the lives of innocent women, but the true story is more complex; when it comes to public education and responsible, honest reporting, they utterly failed to make the grade.

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by Catherine Hanssens
CHLP Executive Director

Imagine where HIV-positive people serving time for spitting or consenual sex might be if the advocacy and funding invested in changing state HIV  laws to eliminate informed consent had instead focused on state laws that make criminals of people with HIV.

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by Catherine Hanssens
CHLP Executive Director

More than a dozen town hall meetings are scheduled all across the country to "engage the public in meaningful ways," as the White House website puts it, in the development of a long-overdue national strategy to address the U.S. domestic HIV epidemic. But is this step enough? Is this opportunity for input sufficiently meaningful?

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by Cynthia Fernandez
CHLP Intern

While individuals convicted of prostitution in Tennessee who do not have HIV face misdemeanor charges that usually amount to a fine and probation, those living with HIV face a felony charge and an additional three to fifteen years due to their health status.

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by Margo Kaplan
CHLP Supervising Human Rights Attorney

Last month, a U.S. district court judge chose to sentence an HIV-positive pregnant woman to more than double the recommended time for the sole stated purpose of keeping her in prison until she delivered. Being pregnant and having HIV are not crimes, and using imprisonment to coerce pregnant women to make the medical care choices the state thinks is best is an outrageous abuse of the system. 

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by Regan Hofmann
Editor-in-Chief, POZ and poz.com

The Daily Beast
www.thedailybeast.com
(c) 2009 RTST, Inc.

A Canadian court has handed down the world’s first murder conviction for knowingly exposing and infecting someone with the AIDS virus. But as an HIV-positive woman, I know that the man who infected me only deserves half the blame.

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by Alison Mehlman
CHLP Director of Planning & Policy Research

It appears as if some physicians in New York State feel that their time and convenience should be a primary determinant of HIV testing policy. But what has happened to patient-centered care? Should the perceived inconvenience of a health care provider trump the enforcement of necessary patient protections?

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by Catherine Hanssens
CHLP Executive Director

A flurry of outraged discussion has continued in the wake of the voiced objections of Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis to a bill, SB-179, which would, among other things, require HIV testing of all pregnant women who don’t explicitly object to the testing.

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by Catherine Hanssens
CHLP Executive Director

Given what we know about the near-zero risk of HIV transmission from health care worker to patient, even during so-called exposure-prone procedures, it’s past time that the nation’s public health authority acknowledges that their own guidelines are too restrictive.

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by Bill Piper
Director, National Affairs
Drug Policy Alliance

According to news reports, President-elect Obama is considering nominating Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN) to be the next director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) or "drug czar." That would be a mistake.

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by Joseph Sonnabend, M.D.,
CHLP Medical Resource Specialist,
and Ashley Burczak,
CHLP Program and Development Associate

All across the country, at AIDS conferences and medical provider “summits,” and from professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, we hear the call for dispensing with informed consent in HIV testing to a more doctor-centered approach—“opt-out” testing—which relieves health care providers of the obligation to explain HIV and its consequences before testing patients for it.

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by Margo Kaplan
Staff Attorney

Reliance on stigma over fact puts teenagers at greater risk by teaching them that avoiding HIV is not a matter of avoiding risky activities but rather avoiding “risky people.” More

by Ashley Burczak
Program and Development Associate, Co-Founder and Former Executive Director of Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER)

The National Sexuality Resource Center has released a new study on the impact of abstinence-only programs, and their findings point to problems so deep that these programs can actually be considered a human rights violation. More