The Current HIV/AIDS Prevention Strategies—Widely Outsmarted by Omitting Realities: A Socio-Critical Analysis in the Context of Powerless Law, Ethics and Asymmetric Interpretation of Human Rights

Abstract

The HIV pandemic seems to be fading to some degree-but there are regional exceptions. The current liberal prevention strategy with programs aimed at risk reduction interventions in particular for sexual behavior and injecting drug use has been expanded by antiretroviral treatment approaches. It was expected to keep the prevalence of infectious individuals below a certain threshold to curb self-sustaining chains of HIV infections. The introduction of biomedical approaches by ART/HAART with regard to practicing risk reduction behavior has been received as an exemption of responsibility by certain populations who are defined as "at-risk" population. Certain parts of the hard-to-reach, high-risk population have returned to unsafe sex practices leading to careless behavior which in turn has promoted the spread of HIV. This is supported by modern trends in risk societies where with regard to HIV basic principles of ethics and tenets of the Human Rights like "don't harm other people" have lost any normative power. In addition, with the support of NGOs, legal norms such as protecting the "bodily integrity of individuals" have been ignored, allowing the "passing of HIV to partners" to become socially acceptable behavior. As a whole, in defiance of the endeavors of prevention applied so far, certain societies are exposed to an ongoing spread of HIV.

The Disregarded HIV Prevention Strategies—Their Potential to Uphold the Pandemic, and the Challenges Facing Societies

“…Apart from very rare cases that came to court (in Germany), thus far: the legal systems are powerless. The law has lost its normative power in the context of the issues discussed here [101] [102]. This powerlessness of legal systems of certain countries in Europe and Central Asia is presented in the "ECDC Evidence Brief: HIV and laws and policies in Europe" [103].…”

HIV and other STI public prevention campaigns: Vain endeavours to break risky new trends in view of blending sex and drugs

“…Due to internationally operating sexual networks there are infections crossing borders and international clusters of different kinds are being established [27], e.g., including Chinese [19] and Caucasian [21] communities. These trends as a result of engagement in high risk behaviour also indicate another increasing threat to public health: the spread of HCV [28][29][30].…”