SCOTUS Puts HIV on Hot Seat

While some might consider a million impoverished African miners who are dying or dead from mine-related diseases too remote to affect their personal lives, thousands of people throughout Europe, Canada and the US have already endured Big Brother in ways that few of us can imagine.

Despite the hysteria of the 1980s, most Americans learned that if they weren’t huffing nitrites, smoking meth, hooking up in gay bath houses, or submitting themselves to meaningless HIV tests, AIDS was not a threat.

Karri Stokely thought so.

After taking a test in 1996, the married middle-class mom took HIV drugs for more than ten years before learning that the AIDS tests meant nothing and the drugs were harming her immune system and liver.

When she stopped her medications, Stokely suffered four months of severe withdrawal symptoms. It took nearly two years for the effects of the highly addictive hypnotic drug to subside.

Willie Campbell also thought the HIV test was no big thing. But after Dallas County sheriff’s deputies arrested him in 2006, he was convicted this year of “assault with a deadly weapon” against a police officer. His assault weapon: Saliva.

Although a few suspects have spat upon me during my career, none of them deserved 35 years in prison – which is what the court sentenced Mr. Campbell.

Since officially declaring saliva a “deadly weapon,” does the ruling mean that cops are authorized to use deadly force on those who threaten to spit on them? If that seems unreasonable, is it because saliva really isn’t as deadly as the Texas jury thought, or do Texas cops have a higher risk of catching HIV than LA cops? If HIV is so dangerously contagous, why aren’t these allegedly HIV+ persons quarantined like TB patients?

Is the ACLU okay with Gitmo guards who use deadly force against inmates who throw feces and spit, or do Muslim terrorists and US Marines share some sort of mysterious immunity? Should all of the Gitmo inmates be tested? If not, why?

Are there no gay Muslims?

Unlike Mr. Campbell, Florida resident Eneydi Torres hooked up with a few boyfriends last year. When they learned she was allegedly HIV+, Osceola County Sheriff deputies arrested her for infecting four boyfriends. In Texas, she’d be facing four counts of assault with a deadly weapon but, in Florida, she’s out on bail.

Luckily for Ms. Torres, a recent court case suggests that all charges will soon be dropped against her and, if things work out right, Campbell and other allegedly HIV+ suspects and inmates in the US may soon be released as well.

This recent SCOTUS decision now prohibits the admissibility of forensic lab results without making available the lab tech who conducts the test, or manufacturers who create it. This means that prosecutors cannot accept hearsay evidence that HIV exists, attacks cells and causes AIDS. Lab techs will now have to produce evidence, just like police officers do with speeding tickets, and blood-alcohol samples. Courts can no longer take judicial notice that HIV exists on the hearsay of a well-groomed recipient of pharmaceutical funding, nor can courts assume that HIV tests detect anything more than what all healthy mammals are born with.

When I qualified in court as an expert (voir dire), my opinion was only enough to establish probable cause. For a criminal filing and a conviction, however, I had to produce evidence that confirmed my opinion.

This could be the leverage that HIV skeptics have been waiting for. After a trillion dollars in wasted funding, taxpayers have also waited long enough.

After nearly 30 years, the time for scientists to prove – in a real US courtroom – that HIV exists, attacks cells and causes AIDS is long overdue.

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