They further raised the question of whether public health laws would not be better suited than criminal law to deal with those individuals who, knowing that they are infected, engage in behaviours likely to transmit HIV without using precautions and without previously informing their partners about their HIV status. Some pointed to the need for educating the court system about HIV and how it is or is not transmitted. This is reflected in the legal literature, which counts numerous articles on this issue. While most of these articles were written in the US, this is one of the few areas in which there is a fairly large and growing body of Canadian literature. The experiences in the US with some of the statutes enacted there can be valuable for Canada, and the conclusions reached in the articles reviewing them should be taken into account in deciding whether such an offence should be enacted here, and, if so, what it should look like.
Most articles follow the same pattern.
An International Analysis. However, there is disagreement about whether the criminal law should intervene at all. According to her, anyone who knowingly engages in high-risk conduct and does not inform the other participant deserves condemnation, and the strongest way to express that condemnation is through the criminal law. We need an outlet for expression of outrage at such wilful or reckless behaviour. However, he admits that the use of the criminal sanction to punish and deter conduct likely to result in transmission of HIV raises serious doubts about the purposes of the criminal law and its efficacy in dealing with problems such as HIV transmission.