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A blood-borne disease is a disease that can be spread through contamination by blood and other body fluids. Blood can contain pathogens of various types, chief among which are microorganisms, like bacteria and parasites, and non-living infectious agents such as viruses. Three blood-borne pathogens in particular, all viruses, are cited as of primary concern to health workers by the CDC-NIOSH: HIV, hepatitis B (HVB), & hepatitis C (HVC).
The spread of HIV/AIDS has affected millions of people worldwide; AIDS is considered a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2016 there were 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, with 1.8 million new HIV infections per year and 1 million deaths due to AIDS. Misconceptions about HIV and AIDS arise from several different sources, from simple ignorance and misunderstandings about scientific knowledge regarding HIV infections and the cause of AIDS to misinformation propagated by individuals and groups with ideological stances that deny a causative relationship between HIV infection and the development of AIDS. Below is a list and explanations of some common misconceptions and their rebuttals.
The Canadian Red Cross Society is a Canadian humanitarian charitable organization, and one of 192 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. The organization receives funding from both private donations and from Canadian government departments.
Luc Montagnier was a French virologist and joint recipient, with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen, of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He worked as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
The HIV trial in Libya concerns the trials, appeals and eventual release of six foreign medical workers charged with conspiring to deliberately infect over 400 children with HIV in 1998, causing an epidemic at El-Fatih Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. About 56 of the infected children had died by August 2007. The total number of victims rose to 131 in 2022.
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Other countries charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault or fraud.
Elizabeth Glaser was an American AIDS activist and child advocate married to actor and director Paul Michael Glaser. She contracted HIV very early in the AIDS epidemic after receiving an HIV-contaminated blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth. Like other HIV-infected mothers, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her infant daughter, Ariel, who died in 1988.
In the 1980s, between one and two thousand haemophilia patients in Japan contracted HIV via contaminated blood products. Controversy centered on the continued use of non-heat-treated blood products after the development of heat treatments that prevented the spread of infection. Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, executives of the manufacturing company and a leading doctor in the field of haemophilia study were charged for involuntary manslaughter.
The tainted blood disaster, or the tainted blood scandal, was a Canadian public health crisis in the 1980s in which thousands of people were exposed to HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products. It became apparent that inadequately-screened blood, often coming from high-risk populations, was entering the system through blood transfusions. It is now considered to be the largest single (preventable) public health disaster in the history of Canada.
Johnson Aziga is a Ugandan-born Canadian man formerly residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, notable as the first person to be charged and convicted of first-degree murder in Canada for spreading HIV, after two women whom he had infected without their knowledge died.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. It can be managed with treatment. Without treatment it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Richard J. Schmidt was an American former physician who was convicted by a Louisiana court in 1998 of attempted second degree murder for injecting his mistress, Janice Trahan, with HIV. The case marked the first time in forensic history that viral RNA was used to prove a link between two people with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in a criminal trial.
Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal is a feature-length documentary by Arkansas filmmaker and investigative journalist Kelly Duda. Through interviews and presentation of documents and footage, Duda alleges that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Arkansas prison system profited from selling blood plasma from inmates infected with viral hepatitis and HIV. The documentary contends that thousands of victims who received transfusions of blood products derived from these plasma products, Factor VIII, died as a result.
Contaminated hemophilia blood products were a serious public health problem in the late 1970s up to 1985.
In April 1991, the doctor and journalist Anne-Marie Casteret published an article in the French weekly magazine the L'Événement du jeudi showing that the Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine knowingly distributed blood products contaminated with HIV to haemophiliacs in 1984 and 1985, leading to an outbreak of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C in numerous countries. It is estimated that 6,000 to 10,000 haemophiliacs were infected in the United States alone. In France, 4,700 people were infected, and over 300 died. Other impacted countries include Canada, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
The history of HIV/AIDS in Australia is distinctive, as Australian government bodies recognised and responded to the AIDS pandemic relatively swiftly, with the implementation of effective disease prevention and public health programs, such as needle and syringe programs (NSPs). As a result, despite significant numbers of at-risk group members contracting the virus in the early period following its discovery, Australia achieved and has maintained a low rate of HIV infection in comparison to the rest of the world.
The HIV-Tainted Blood Case is a Supreme Court of Japan case that resulted in a landmark decision regarding criminal responsibility for administrative negligence. The Court upheld the conviction of Akihito Matsumura, former director of the biologics division of the old Health and Welfare Ministry, for his failure to prevent the use of HIV-contaminated blood products in the 1980s that resulted in the death of a patient. According to the two lower court rulings, Matsumura caused the death of a patient with liver disease in December 1995 by failing to stop the use of unheated blood products contaminated with HIV. The decision marks the first time that a government official has been held criminally responsible for administrative negligence. The decision finalized a verdict of 1 year in prison, suspended for two years, for Matsumura.
A pin prick attack is an assault on another person with a needle or syringe tainted with the blood of somebody carrying a blood-borne disease, such as HIV. Although there have been numerous cases of people being attacked with needles and syringes, the idea that people infected with AIDS have deliberately attempted to infect others in this manner is generally considered an urban legend, real cases of infection of HIV in this manner were typically taken from infected victims rather than from infected attackers.
The criminal transmission of HIV in the United States varies among jurisdictions. More than thirty of the fifty U.S. states have prosecuted HIV-positive individuals for exposing another person to HIV. State laws criminalize different behaviors and assign different penalties. While pinpointing who infected whom is scientifically impossible, a person diagnosed with HIV who is accused of infecting another while engaging in sexual intercourse is, in many jurisdictions, automatically committing a crime. A person donating HIV-infected organs, tissues, and blood can be prosecuted for transmitting the virus. Spitting or transmitting HIV-infected bodily fluids is a criminal offense in some states, particularly if the target is a prison guard. Some states treat the transmission of HIV, depending upon a variety of factors, as a felony and others as a misdemeanor.
HIV/AIDS in Japan has been recognized as a serious health issue in recent years. However, overall awareness amongst the general population of Japan regarding sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, remains low.
References
- AIDS Policy Law. 1998 Dec 25;13(22):11
- ↑ "MODOC Offender Search". web.mo.gov. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
- 1 2 Thomas, Jo (December 4, 1998). "Man Accused of Injecting H.I.V. in Son". The New York Times . Retrieved May 24, 2008.
- 1 2 "Man accused of injecting infant son with HIV". CNN . April 22, 1998. Retrieved May 24, 2008.
- ↑ Wass, Julian (November 8, 2002). "A Weekly Compendium of Horror Stories from Around the Globe". Stanford Daily . Archived from the original on February 14, 2007. Retrieved May 24, 2008.
- 1 2 "Mother in HIV case pleads for privacy". CNN . April 24, 1998. Retrieved May 24, 2008.
- ↑ "Man convicted for injecting his son with HIV virus". CNN . 1998-12-06. Archived from the original on January 7, 2007. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
- ↑ "National News Briefs; Man Is Given Life Term In Boy's AIDS Infection". The New York Times . January 9, 1999. Retrieved May 24, 2008.
- ↑ Taylor, Betsy (June 6, 2009). "Injected with HIV by dad as baby, teen inspires". Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 11, 2009. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
- ↑ Hancock, Lucy (October 18, 2016). "Brryan Jackson: My father injected me with HIV". BBC News . Retrieved January 22, 2018.