Published January, 2006
Conflicting Messages: How Criminal HIV Disclosure Laws Undermine Public Health Efforts to Control the Spread of HIV, C. Galletly and S.D. Pinkerton, AIDS Behavior (2006)
This summary is taken in part from the article abstract.
As structural interventions aimed at reducing new HIV infections, HIV-related criminal laws ideally would complement the HIV prevention efforts of public health professionals. The authors here conclude that they do not. This article demonstrates how HIV disclosure laws disregard or discount the effectiveness of universal precautions and safer sex, criminalize activities that are central to harm reduction efforts, and offer, as an implicit alternative to risk reduction and safer sex, a disclosure-based HIV transmission prevention strategy that undermines public health efforts. The article also describes how criminal HIV disclosure laws may work against the efforts of public health leaders to reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward persons living with HIV.
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