Sharleen Spiteri was an Australian HIV+ sex worker, who became the focus of significant media, public and New South Wales Government attention in Australia after appearing on the 60 Minutes television programme in 1989, where she revealed in an interview that she sometimes had sex with clients without revealing her illness or using condoms. [1] [2]
After the 60 Minutes programme went to air, Spiteri was forcibly detained by New South Wales Police and Health Department authorities, using an obscure section of the Public Health Act (Section 32a), originally intended for the control of tuberculosis. She was kept in detention in Prince Henry Hospital's AIDS ward, and then Rozelle Mental Hospital for several weeks.
Into the early 1990s Spiteri's case continued to spark national public debate. A new law was introduced in New South Wales, colloquially known as "Sharleen's Law" where informed consent prior to sexual intercourse was required.
Although there were many other sex workers in the community who were also HIV+, in similar situations and known to authorities, after her initial release Spiteri came under subsequent public health orders (as well as other agreements undisclosed by the NSW Health Department), spending much of the remaining 16 years of her life under supervision of health workers as a public patient of the NSW Health system. She died in 2005.
In 2015, Tom Morton and Eurydice Aroney, both journalists and lecturers at the University of Technology Sydney, [3] [4] published Journalism, Moral Panic and the Public Interest - The Case of Sharleen Spiteri. [5] The paper questioned the ethics of the reporting of Spiteri's case. [5]
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community.
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Prostitution or sex work in Australia is governed by state and territory laws, which vary considerably. Federal legislation also affects some aspects of sex work throughout Australia, and of Australian citizens abroad.
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Vietnam faces a concentrated HIV epidemic.
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the Australian state of New South Wales have most of the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual cisgender people.
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AIDS photo diary, 1986–1990 is an art work that comprises a photo diary that records the decline in health and eventual death of David Tosh, from AIDS from 1986 to 1990 in Sydney, Australia. The diary – with accompanying photographs taken by John Jenner – was created by Jenner to remember his friend and honour the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. Some of the images were featured in an article in Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend magazine, 13 October 1990, pp. 20–29.
Cheryl Overs founder and former first director of the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria, the Scarlet Alliance in Australia and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1957 and educated at University High School and La Trobe University. Overs set up organisations, oversaw events and authored texts that established the place of sex workers rights within the global response to HIV/AIDS.
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John Michael Dwyer, is an Australian doctor, professor of medicine, and public health advocate. He was originally a Professor of Medicine and Paediatrics, then Head of the Department of Clinical Immunology at Yale University. Returning to Australia, he became Head of the Department of Medicine and the Clinical Dean at the University of New South Wales and Director of Medicine at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital, the University's major teaching hospital, for over twenty years. In retirement he is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine of the University. He founded the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance, and was the founding president of the Friends of Science in Medicine until 2019. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to public health.
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The COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The first confirmed case in New South Wales was identified on 19 January 2020 in Sydney where three travellers returning from Wuhan, Hubei, China, tested positive for the virus.