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Comment by Clampower | Hacker News Reader

This is such an ignorant comment that I've seen perpetuated around the internet recently, that I made an account just to respond to this.

HIV positive people on medication, cannot spread HIV. It's factually safer to have sex with an HIV positive person on meds, than a person who doesn't get tested and doesn't know their status.

This law exists so that HIV positive people who cannot spread the virus are not legally obligated to tell others they have the virus.

Please learn more about what it means to be HIV positive, and the discrimination that comes with it before making these horrible disparaging comments.

Undetectable = Uninfectable (u=u) maybe a good thing for you to Google.

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It's debatable. On the one hand, yes the most common case that the law applied to was "has HIV but virus loads are undetectable and thus risk of infection is nonexistent". On the other, removing that law means that someone who's off their meds with the intention of infecting others is now only guilty of a misdemeanor.

Personally, I'm still not sure how that doesn't count as rape by deception, but whatever.

In any case, I brought it up to compare to pandemic mask mandates. A "gay sex condom mandate" 30 or 40 years ago would have been incredibly effective at containing HIV (assuming it was actually followed), and HIV was at the time FAR more deadly than COVID-19. The fact that people consider one acceptable and one unthinkable is IMO interesting.

>HIV positive people on medication, cannot spread HIV

Absurdly false. Not everyone responds the same to medication, not everyone has the same health conditions, and not everyone begins treatment at the same time. Further to that, completely besides the point:

If you have a fatal disease that can only be kept at bay with powerful ARV's (that are often expensive and loaded with serious side effects), then you have the responsibility to inform those you potentially expose to it. Paramedics, doctors, dentists, sexual partners. Basic decency. You are KNOWINGLY making potentially life and death decisions for others by depriving them of information.

“ But a defendant only violates Penal Code 120290 when he or she intentionally tries to infect a partner. So people will usually not be liable under a theory of negligence per se.

This means that in most cases, a plaintiff would have to prove actual negligence by a preponderance of the evidence.”

The law does not require that someone be on HIV medication, you have to prove ill intent or negligence.

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