<<This was a golden opportunity for the public health authorities to reinforce the message of “protected sex during every sexual encounter” and it has been squandered.>>
Wake up doc.
The safe sex mantra is clearly not working, otherwise how did those 12-100 women come to be at risk?
It's long past time to enact a serious prevention policy.
1 year jail for each person unknowingly infected.
10 years jail for each person knowingly infected.
Namby pamby approaches don't work.
It's time to get tough.
Put the perpetrator's away where they can't repeat offend,
and provide serious disincentives to dissuade potential offenders.

I agree that Joe doesn't seem to get the point of the Health Department putting out a warning to women who may have had sex with this HIV infected man.

Obviously at least one woman he did have sex with has found out she is now HIV positive and has told her medical practitioner who the culprit was.

By law, medical practitioners have to report these sorts of viral diseases to the health department.
Even if the disease is something like syphilis or herpes, they still often send letters to the person who passed it on (if known), in order to protect present or future sexual partners.

This is not a moral issue or a religious issue, it is a public health issue.
What if the women who had sex with this infected man were married and went on to have 'lawful' sex with their poor husbands, who then contracted a possibly fatal virus?

What if the women become pregnant and pass it on to innocent children?
These women must be found for this reason.

All cases of HIV must be reported to the authorities straight away, and acted upon to help prevent further spread.

"Ït is unfortunate that the Australian public health authorities’ response was not based on the sound public health principles of respect to privacy and confidentially. Breach of confidentially and the criminalisation of alleged behaviours which facilitate HIV transmission is not a sound HIV prevention policy."
It is surprising how the author can hold such a narrow and irresponsible view.
It is malicious for HIV carriers to knowingly run the risk of infecting others. It is irresponsible to claim that the interests of the HIV carrier should over-ride any other interests. Such non-thinking has contributed to the spread of HIV in developing countries.
The interests of the community must come first. It is perfectly just to prosecute someone for such irresponsible behaviour.
It is irresponsible to claim that “protected sex during every sexual encounter” is safe sex, when the failure rate of condom use is at least one in four. Abstinence is the only safe sex there is.

'This is not a moral issue or a religious issue, it is a public health issue. '

I see Suzie so this man should not be charged and left to continue sleeping with loose women. But its not a moral issue.

Having unprotected sex without informing his partners knowing that it could kill the partner goes beyond negligence to attempted murder.

While most people responsibly manage their HIV status, this man is as much a threat to society as someone walking around blind folded firing with pistol.

While there is no need to make HIV a notifiable disease, punishing those who inflict harm on others always is.

The truth is that condoms are closer to 99.5% effective. When they don't work it is because people don't use them or don't use them correctly or most often in developing countries,simply don't have access to them. Using condoms and lube correctly is the best prevention we have against HIV and it has been systematically proven through meta-analysis of research that to promote only abstinance programs is not efficacious.
It is equally true that the majority of people with HIV are responsible people who go out of their way to ensure that they do not pass on the infection. Unfortunately, up to 30% of infections are passed on by people who do not even know that they have it yet. In Australia 25-30% of infections are contracted by people in long term relationships. How could criminalising either of these groups serve a worthwhile purpose?
Joe Thomas does not not articulate the position well but it is generally accepted in Australia that this is indeed a health issue which should be dealt with through counselling in a confidential manner because to do otherwise risks driving people away from testing,treatment and counselling which may in turn cause more infections and more hardship for more people.
He also failed to leave room for what our laws indeed do, which is that in the rare, extreme cases where someone with HIV deliberately sets out to infect someone else we see a role for the criminal law if they are proven guilty.
The problem is that too often a person with HIV is judged guilty in the media long before they ever get near to a court and the very principle of innocent until proven guilty so central to our justice system goes out the window.
We must ensure that this does not occur again in this case.