Kansas wants to quarantine HIV suffers

[Lillybee]

There is a bill going to the governor's desk that would quarantine people with HIV.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/27/a ... imination/

[samurai_sarah]

That's a fantastic idea! We could paint crosses onto their doors, throw in food whenever the neighbours remember, kill all the cats and dogs, and...oh, wait, I'm thinking of medieval plagues. Sorry about that. Hi from the Middle Ages, can we have our ideas back? :roll:

[OkToBeTakei]

That's a fantastic idea! We could paint crosses onto their doors, throw in food whenever the neighbours remember, kill all the cats and dogs, and...oh, wait, I'm thinking of medieval plagues. Sorry about that. Hi from the Middle Ages, can we have our ideas back? :roll:

NO NO. You forward thinker you. Let's just set up a colony. Leprosy?

What is wrong with these people? I find this very, very scary. It is like the world is going backwards.

[SomewhatFundy]

I honestly thought that everyone knew you can't just pick up HIV like the common cold. I guess not. WTF?

[MarthaMarcyMayMarlen]

Quarentine for how long? Who will support them? They really didn't think this through.

[Koala]

Quarentine for how long? Who will support them? They really didn't think this through.

For the love of shit, is she still here?

Our family has a friend with AIDS. The idea of him being put into quarantine makes me want to scream.

[Maggie Mae]

So the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure of ones person no longer would apply in Kansas, I take it.

This is scary.

[chilsa]

Given their strident pro-life tendencies, how many of the babeeeez saved from abortion will these people want rid of once the babies reach adulthood? Even those precious souls will do something to piss Kansas of at some point in their lives. God forbid they get such a prohibited illness! Pro life my hind end.

[doggie]

would it not be cheaper and more beneficial to just isolate the GOP from the public?

[HeckBound]

Places like Kansas is one of th reasons I so desperately want to see DOMA and prop 9 overturned. If the haters won't join the 21st century willingly, they'll be dragged kicking and screaming. Hell, gays from all over the country should show up at Kansas courthouses in droves and demand marriage licenses.

[Stephers831]

Can we just combine Kansas and North Dakota (6 week abortion limit passed) and make them their own little country and throw them out of the USA? They're obviously living in a different world anyways.

[Lillybee]

I was thinking that they could quarantine them in the super sekrid HSA camps that Obama is building. I know that years ago Cuba did have camps for people with HIV, I wonder what happened to them and if they are still in use.

[GiGi_41]

Guess all this research will just go to waste in Kansas

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/18/health/hi ... ional-cure

And don't get me started about North Dakota...these f'ing people who are so hell bent on saving a fetus until it leaves the womb, then it's all fuck you kid..your mom smoked some dope so no food stamps for you!

Angry!

[miffy]

Why not make them homeless? & then make a law that they must climb into a tree & ring a bell if they see a non-aids patient walking near them.

[PennySycamore]

GAH! WHAT. THE. FUCK? Do the bozos who proposed this legislation thank that only "those people" (gays, blacks, drug users, Haitians) get HIV and what's more they deserve it? That kind of thinking is positively medieval! It's the kind of shit proposed by the late Dr Robert Mendelson who was also an adamant anti-vaxxer. Do they not realize that quarantining HIV+ people will make people less likely to get tested?

Fortunately, this legislation has not yet passed.

[ADoyle90815]

GAH! WHAT. THE. FUCK? Do the bozos who proposed this legislation thank that only "those people" (gays, blacks, drug users, Haitians) get HIV and what's more they deserve it? That kind of thinking is positively medieval! It's the kind of shit proposed by the late Dr Robert Mendelson who was also an adamant anti-vaxxer. Do they not realize that quarantining HIV+ people will make people less likely to get tested?

Fortunately, this legislation has not yet passed.

I agree that this will make people less likely to get tested for HIV, and it's a very scary thing that such a thing is even being considered. Too many people seem to view 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale as how-to books.

[lipstickgoalie]

In the words of Futurama's Professor Farnsworth: "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

[dairyfreelife]

I personally wish everyone with a stomach bug would be quarantined until the virus is out of their system completely. Can we get a bill to force anyone who feels sick at all to be quarantined until the bug passes? It would make me feel better and not be so nervous and that's all that matters. I don't care about the science related behind actually catching a stomach virus. I want the bill because I don't want all these sick people walking around causing stupid outbreaks of noro and rotaviruses, so pass that bill!

[stonefruit]

I get that the folks in charge in Kansas aren't much concerned with civil rights/civil liberties, but this would violate the ADA and the First Amendment (right to free association). Are they actively soliciting lawsuits?

[SoybeanQueen]

Places like Kansas is one of th reasons I so desperately want to see DOMA and prop 9 overturned. If the haters won't join the 21st century willingly, they'll be dragged kicking and screaming. Hell, gays from all over the country should show up at Kansas courthouses in droves and demand marriage licenses.

Awesome. I hope they let us know before they come so I can bring some flowers.

Just because our government sucks doesn't mean the entire state hates gay people, btw. Or people with HIV.

[Hane]

Two dear friends of mine died of AIDS in the early '90s. One of them was my partner at work for years. The other was my ex's best friend since childhood, and we visited each other and had dinner at each other's homes often--until the very end of his life. Yet somehow I never managed to contract HIV from either of them. Maybe I should call Kansas and spread the news.

[Beammeup]

1982 called. They want their attitudes about AIDS back where it belongs in history! They said they were assholes about AIDS then, and it's even more assholeish now because everyone knows you can't get AIDS from non-intimate contact.

[JenniferJuniper]

1982 called. They want their attitudes about AIDS back where it belongs in history! They said they were assholes about AIDS then, and it's even more assholeish now because everyone knows you can't get AIDS from non-intimate contact.

Seriously. What the hell is prompting this sudden flashback to ignorance?

[chaotic life]

I interact with HIV+ people on a consistent basis. The entire reason that I'm able to KNOW most of my patients who are HIV+ when I interact with them is because I live in an area that has made the status a non-issue. I use Standard Precautions for the precise reason that it reduces the risk of exposure to ANY bloodborne pathogens. I get a lot more antsy about HepC than HIV anyway (no vaccines, no good treatments and attacks the liver of which mine isn't exacctly the healthiest for a lot of reasons mostly genetic).

So, Kansas has taken something every state actually NEEDS to protect healthcare workers, the ability to do automatic testing if healthcare workers have an exposure (aka a needle stick situation) and has tacked on this clause of ignorance and hate. Terrific, and HIV+ patients will conceal their status, making it harder to treat them and harder to provide the care they need. I'm not even sure this law can hold up in court, which will mean you throw your healthcare workers back to the less optimal standard of requiring they take ARVs with an assumption that every exposure is contaminated.

HIV is NOT spread by casual contact. It's NOT spread by standard medical contact where Standard Precautions are observed. It's easily treated at the point of exposure to prevent the healthcare worker from contracted it even if there is an exposure. Frankly, if we're going to revert back to ostrocizing HIV+ patients, I would rather we just not test and assume all exposures were positive and give the medication regiment before it would be acceptable to go back into the dark ages on handling HIV+ citizens.

HIV is NOT a gay issue. It's so IGNORANT to assume it is. The last time I was looking at the stats, the fasted growing rates of HIV infection are now young, heterosexual women and senior citizens in general, who became married and monogamous prior to HIV and aren't too keen on safe sex practices as they become widowed and re-enter the dating scene.

[NjoyingNsanity]

One of my best friends was just diagnosed with HIV after being raped last year I can't imagine adding the punishment of being quarantined to what she has already been through. Of course these assholes probably would claim her rape at knife-point by two men who attacked her while she was hiking on a trail at a local state park was her fault