So many harms, so little benefit: a global review of the history and harms of HIV criminalisation.

Since the early years of HIV, many jurisdictions have criminalised HIV non-disclosure, potential or perceived exposure, and transmission. Many of these laws and prosecutions are without a scientific basis and reflect an inaccurate understanding of HIV-related risk and harm. Numerous studies of HIV criminal prosecutions show that women, sex workers, racial minorities, gay and bisexual men, transgender people, immigrants, and Indigenous people are disproportionately charged and convicted, often resulting in long custodial sentences. Data from molecular HIV surveillance, used to track HIV outbreaks in marginalised populations, are prone to be misused in HIV criminal cases. Scientific consensus statements and international standards have helped to guide advocacy to repeal or reform a number of these laws, resulting in fewer prosecutions in some jurisdictions. Many successful reform efforts have been led by people living with HIV and are notable at a moment of reckoning on racism and inequality in global health.

Criminalization of HIV transmission or exposure: global extent, impact and the way forward.

In the following article, Edwin J. Bernard provides a summary of a satellite meeting co-organized by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) and NAM, held just prior to AIDS 2010, in which advocates working to end the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and non-intentional transmission shared experiences of national and international advocacy responses to help inform future strategies.

U.K.: new publications on HIV transmission and exposure and the criminal justice system.

Two important new medico-legal publications aimed at individuals who work within--or are in contact with--the criminal justice system have recently been published by two U.K.-based organisations,NAM (a community-based provider of HIV information) and the National AIDS Trust (NAT).Although both publications are U.K.-focused, much of the information is relevant to other settings.

After Toronto, 46th ICAAC offers back to basics.

After the marathon-like challenge presented by the 16th International AIDS Conference held in Toronto a month prior--a challenge that tested the stamina of even the youngest and fittest of conference-goers--the 46th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), held September 27-30, 2006, in San Francisco, was a welcome relief in its staid and singular focus on the presentation of data offering insights into the challenges a variety of patients and their physicians are facing in the second decade of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), as well as reviews of how to make optimal use of antiretroviral regimens constructed from within the existing HAART armamentarium. The big news at this year's ICAAC, however, was on the antiretroviral pipeline, with previews of how a new generation of drugs may help make the difference between life and death for countless millions of men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS.