Blog #4

In this is weeks blog, I’d like to discuss about this weeks Question Of The Week question. We were asked how we felt if University of Central Florida adopted a policy that would allow a health professional or student working in the Student Health Dept./Wellness Center to disclose another student's status because of information that was received about a student who was HIV positive was having unprotected sex? My response was that I believe it would be an act of discrimination rather than it being an act of protecting its students because what good would it do to disclose one’s personal health status to the people? However, assuming that it is a male, I do believe that the student should be forced to see a doctor to get an update on how his condition is and perhaps should be expelled because he is purposely putting other students’ health in danger since he knows what his condition is and is being very irresponsible with his behavior as well. This whole process though should be done behind closed doors without anybody who doesn’t need to know. Those girls that he messed around with should be notified about the situation because they may have been infected with the virus and the student should be forced to reveal those names. Nonetheless, if I was in his shoes, I would definitely not be irresponsible enough as to sleep with people knowing that I am HIV positive and perfectly knowing that I may be infecting them in the process. I find it disgusting that someone would do such a thing and that people do do that because they are selfish and only care about their personal needs. Going back to the issue, imagine if word got around that you were HIV positive and when people looked at you they would stare at you, know that you are obviously being talked about, and when you look at certain people or person they would look the other way because they are afraid of your condition. You would have pretty much have no chance in finding any type of romantic relationship with anyone. Also, imagine if they knew as well that you were sleeping with people unprotected. I would not like the person first of all because of what they did but not because they are HIV positive. My question though is “what would revealing his personal issues and health for the safety of everyone else do?” “Would you really want to discriminate this person, which pretty much is what going on, and make everybody scare of him?” You would be ruining his social and psychological life as well as romantic life but in this case I wouldn’t care if you ruined his romantic life because this is what they deserves for doing what they did.

Did you know?....
As I was mentioning in last week’s blog, Sixty-eight of the 88 prisoners who were identified being tested HIV negative upon entering Georgia’s prisons in fall of 2005 but later tested positive, were surveyed. Those interviews were compared to those of HIV-negative inmates. The results found that “The HIV-positive participants were about 13 times as likely as the HIV-negative participants to have been tattooed in jail and about 10 times as likely to have had sex with another man in prison” (The Body, 2006). It was also found that “of the 68 HIV-positive men, 45 reported having sex with another man, and 22 of those men said they had sex with male prison staff members” (The Body, 2006). An additional fact I like to throw in there is that 59% of the positive tested interviewees had received tattoos (The body, 2006). The inmates suggested distributing condoms, using safer tattooing methods and having the provision of HIV/AIDS education as ways to help the HIV virus from spreading and prevent inmates from contracting it.

The Body (April 21, 2006). Retrieved September 30, 2009, from http://www.thebody.com/content/whatis/art8032.html