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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 6/8/2004 5:13 AM (GMT -6) |   | Questions: Should not these women be held accountable on SOME moral (if not legal) level? Should not such agencies as the Windsor/Essex County Health Unit be held morally culpable (if not legally) for the dissemination of condoms if that was indeed their role in this? Story below.
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HIV-positive man may have infected dozens
Businessman charged with knowingly giving virus to 2 women
Doug Schmidt
Windsor Star
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
A local businessman charged Monday with knowingly transmitting the HIV virus to two women could have infected as many as 100 to 200 other sexual partners, Windsor police allege.
Investigators are pleading for anyone who may have had sexual contact with the accused to speak with police or to at least have themselves tested for the virus that causes AIDS.
Carl Leone, 28, remains in custody following a brief Ontario Court appearance Monday, when he was formally arraigned on two charges of aggravated assault and a third count of committing a "common nuisance," a relatively new criminal charge pertaining to an unlawful act that endangers the life or safety of others. He was arrested Sunday.
Staff Sgt. Neal Jessop, who is leading a team of detectives on the case, answered "yes" when asked whether there are more alleged victims. He said other women were being interviewed Monday.
"I don't know how many victims there may be ... we're in the very, very early stages of this investigation."
Both he and the prosecutor who spoke in court Monday said estimates of as many as 200 HIV-infected victims is "not unreasonable."
Police are urging anyone who has had sex with the accused over the past decade, or anyone who knows of someone who may have, to contact police.
"We absolutely want them to come forward immediately," said Jessop. "Their identity will be protected."
Given the potentially deadly consequences of contracting the virus, he said seeking medical attention "is something we'd literally beg them to do."
Police executed search warrants Sunday at Leone's home and at Leone's Music World, where the suspect is a vice-president in the family-owned business, which advertises itself as one of Canada's largest locally owned and operated music stores.
On Monday, a third search warrant was executed at the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit. Medical officer of health Dr. Allen Heimann said staff were going through medical records, with police seeking "specific knowledge of a specific case."
Two computers were seized from the suspect's workplace, while a third was taken from his home. Jessop said forensic specialists and police computer experts are poring over the evidence obtained so far.
MET ALLEGED VICTIM ON INTERNET
Both alleged victims, one of whom was met through the Internet, have been diagnosed with the HIV virus.
Jessop said Windsor police investigated the first woman's complaint in 2000, "but that went unresolved." When a second woman from Windsor came forward last Thursday, a new team of detectives was formed, and the first alleged victim, now living in Texas, was contacted again. The alleged offences for which Leone was charged Monday occurred between June, 1998, and Feb. 29, 2004, according to court documents.
Police allege the accused was aware he was HIV-positive yet failed to disclose it to his victims.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1998 that failing to tell a sexual partner you have AIDS or HIV can amount to an assault.
The charges against Leone are the first time police have charged anyone with knowingly engaging in unprotected sex with multiple partners while having HIV.
While contracting HIV "is certainly potentially lethal," said Heimann, it is no longer the automatic death sentence it was until the introduction about eight years ago of retroviral and multiple-drug therapy.
"It's tragic and very, very sad," said Jessop. "Any reasonable, logical person can understand the terrible ramifications of this kind of conduct ... it can be fatal."
AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome triggered by HIV, has become, in North America at least, "much more of a chronic treatable disease," said Heimann, adding: "But I emphasize, it's treatable as opposed to curable."
It's an "extremely complex disease to treat and manage," he said. Treatment for most of the world's AIDS-infected population, however, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is still unavailable, and he said the disease "remains uniformly fatal."
LIFE-SAVING TREATMENT
Dr. Jeff Cohen, medical director of the Windsor Regional Hospital's HIV Care Program, said it was "like a holocaust" before new life-saving treatments became available in 1996.
In 1995, he said, "we used to have someone die here every week to 10 days," he said. Today, he added, the problem is with "the difficulties and negative side effects" experienced by some HIV patients taking the treatments.
After averaging about 20 new cases per year in Windsor and Essex County from 1985 to 2000, the load of new cases went down to only six in 2003 before rebounding this year, to 13 HIV-infected individuals already by the end of May. Heimann said that rising number is of concern and doesn't include the current police investigation.
When first infected, Cohen said a small number of patients will develop flu-like symptoms which are difficult to distinguish from the regular flu. In general, further signs usually don't emerge for another 10 years, even though HIV infection is usually detectable within three to six months of contact with the infected person.
Confidential HIV testing is available by calling the clinic at 254-6115 and asking for the anonymous testing program.
Windsor police detectives can be contacted at 255-6700, ext. 4830, or call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 258-8477.
BEFORE THE COURTS:
On Sept. 3, 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that failing to tell a sexual partner you have AIDS or HIV can amount to assault.
Lower courts had ruled that no assault had taken place in the case of an HIV-infected B.C. man because the partners, who did not contract the virus, consented to sex and were not harmed.
But the Supreme Court ruled that failure to disclose such information amounts to fraud and negates any consent the other partner may have given for sex.
Ran with fact box "Before the Courts" which has been appended to the story.
© The Windsor Star 2004
Brandon
"Corporations are simply the kind of structure that rises when hordes of people need to be managed, and after spending some time in a large church, I've found that our spirituality does not exempt us from these inefficient and dehumanizing practices."--Steve Lansingh's review of "The Office" at The Film Form | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/9/2004 10:53 AM (GMT -6) | | yes, absolutely.
And I believe the following abstract that I received today of an academic work in progress helps to explain why. Unfortunately, it does so in econ-speak.
"HIV Breakthroughs and Risky Sexual Behavior"
BY: DANA P. GOLDMAN
RAND
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
DARIUS LAKDAWALLA
The RAND Corporation
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
NEERAJ SOOD
RAND
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=552311
Paper ID: NBER Working Paper No. W10516
Date: May 2004
Contact: DANA P. GOLDMAN
Email: Mailto:DANA_GOLDMAN@RAND.ORG
Postal: RAND
P.O. Box 2138
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 UNITED STATES
Co-Auth: DARIUS LAKDAWALLA
Email: Mailto:darius@rand.org
Postal: The RAND Corporation
P.O. Box 2138
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 UNITED STATES
Co-Auth: NEERAJ SOOD
Email: Mailto:sood@rand.org
Postal: RAND
P.O. Box 2138
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 UNITED STATES
ABSTRACT:
Recent breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV have coincided with
an increase in infection rates and an eventual slowing of
reductions in HIV mortality. These trends may be causally
related, if treatment improves the health and functional status
of HIV+ individuals and allows them to engage in more sexual
risk-taking. We examine this hypothesis empirically using access
to health insurance as an instrument for treatment status. We
find that treatment results in more sexual risk-taking by HIV+
adults, and possibly more of other risky behaviors like drug
abuse. We show that, in the presence of this effect, treatment and prevention are social complements for incurable diseases.
dlw:I cut some of the more abstruse parts out. The point is that treatment for HIV+ individuals can lead to them risking more the possible spread of their disease and so there is a need to take actions to prevent them from doing this, along with finding better treatments for victims, IMO particularly for victims in the under-developed world who generally have lower levels of education.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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