POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: 0p3n1ngUp on September 07, 2013, 12:25:47 pm
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Seeing as how HIV criminalization laws continue to pop up in the mainstream media, I have some questions. I myself am a young positive male, who has been undetectable since the very first test after beginning my Atripla regimen. My viral load never crested 5k/mL, and I've never had a viral load show in seminal fluid. Additionally I know dozens of sero-disparate couples, with the man (or in some cases top) always the poz individual...and no one has ever passed it on, even after decades together with unprotected sex, and children!
My question is this: are the people I know--including myself--an exception to the rule? Are there individuals out there who, despite being on medication, are still rather infectious? The law is on our side more and more, but every so often I see a headline about some man infecting hundreds of people and facing charges. If this were true, would the individual simply be unmedicated or are there actually people out there who retain an infectious viral load despite their use of modern meds? Because I've never met one....
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I think you mix up too many issues in one thread.
The recent report for example from Missouri is just a few short reports and no accurate no deep information.
Another issue is that you claim to know your viral load in semen. I'm gay and I've never met a gay HIV+ guy on HAART and undetectable who knew his semen viral load. Maybe there are gay guys in magnetic couples who do know this, however.
There was research on straight magnetic couples and yeah you are are not the exception to the rule.
And as you say there are gay magnetic couples who have unprotected sex and also don't pass it on. Someone else on this forum can probably come up with the studies that trace this but I don't know where the studies are myself.
"The law in on our side more and more" is a terribly vague statement. As the laws vary country to country and in the the USA the laws very state to state.
You are aware there are laws in some states where its a crime to simply not disclose. In which there was safe sex and in which there was no transmission.
You can't lump all the sensationalist reports about Typhoid Marys together on certains points....
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Most of these laws were enacted before viral load testing, which didn't become available until mid-1996.
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Most of these laws were enacted before viral load testing, which didn't become available until mid-1996.
In addition, many of these laws do not reflect HIV transmission vectors as we know them today (or knew them in 2001).