Ignorance is bliss? HIV and moral duties and legal duties to forewarn

In 1997, a court in Cyprus jailed Pavlos Georgiou for fifteen months for kn owingly infecting a British woman, Janet Pink, with HIV-1 through unprotect ed sexual intercourse. Pink met Georgiou in January 1994 whilst on holiday. She discovered that she had contracted the virus from him in October 1994 but continued the relationship until July 1996 when she developed AIDS. She returned to the UK for treatment and reported Georgiou to the Cypriot auth orities.(1) There have been a number of legal cases involving deliberate transmission o f HIV, but most have involved forced exposure to infected bodily fluids for example, rape or biting, and have been dealt with using the existing legis lation for rape or assault. While it is often difficult to prove responsibi lity far transmission in cases of forced exposure to HIV, it is even more c ontentious in cases like those of Janet Pink where an individual has consen ted to sex but claims that he/she was not forewarned of his/her partner's H IV-positive status. At present there is no specific criminal offence of hav ing unprotected sexual intercourse without disclosing one's HIV-positive st atus but a prosecution could possibly be brought under any one of a number of existing offences.(2) Perhaps a change of policy needs to be considered. The Home Office has issued a consultation document which outlines a propos al that will allow the criminalisation of intentional transmission of disea ses, like HIV, that are likely to cause serious harm. This revised legislat ion would cover all other potentially fatal diseases (including salmonella and legionnaire's disease, for instance) but seems primarily to be targeted at HIV transmission. Should transmission of HIV through consensual sex, wi thout the HIV-positive status of the individual being disclosed, be art off ence? This question and that of whether there is a moral obligation to disc lose a positive HIV status prior to having a sexual relationship is the sub ject of this paper.