Ah, but what happens when someone just contracted HIV? It's estimated that this is when someone is most highly infectious, and the test won't tell you a damn thing.
I'd like it because it's a bit more convenient than going in every three months, but for testing a date? Bad idea.
Full disclosure: I am an HIV-negative gay man with poz friends and acquaintances.
It's counter-intuitive, but it's not a better idea.
Especially when drunk, people have unfocused attention. Signals of trust are amplified. "He's safe, and we don't have a condom, so just this once..." If you go into a hookup thinking every single person is HIV-positive with an entire host of other STDs, you are much less likely to get one.
You don't want to know how many people I've talked to who got HIV from someone they trusted, and "knew" was negative. On the other hand, by law of averages I've slept with at least 20 poz people. I don't know who they are, but I was smart enough to be careful.
The problem is that it could give you false confidence. A person who is recently infected will show up negative in this test. If you have unprotected sex with them, you are 4,000% more likely to get HIV from them than you are a person who tested positive!
As a current university student, it's not my paternalism. It kind of sucks, doesn't it?
But it's like lots of things in life: sometimes we can't have nice things because other people, who are much less mature and sensible than you, will misuse them, so nobody is allowed them.
Also, "paternalism" is an irritating dog whistle. We are talking about "public health policy", which also means such sensible things as that you can't have plastic surgery done in a car garage or buy cola sweetened with lead acetate or Cyclamate.
I oppose making a less safe substitute available and I think how people actually act is fair game to consider.
Condoms don't substitute for something equivalent that is safer (some people try to make out that they substitute for abstinence, but that is obviously not true since abstinence is obviously not equivalent).
This device could equivalently substitute for condoms (actually, it's probably cheaper and more fun than condoms as long as you don't mind a small pinprick), but it's less safe. Thus my opposition.
Surely then you are opposed to The Pill and other contraceptives that do not hinder the spread of STDs. A major, if not the primary, reason people use condoms under usual circumstances is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
This device is not a substitute, nor will anyone with a conscience and a brain present it that way. It is something to be used in addition to existing technologies and sensibilities. It is about increasing available information so that people are able to make more informed decisions.
That's a different sort of information (how to act to protect yourself) and abstinence-only is not a public health policy. It is a pseudo-religious politician policy.
Now I think about it, you and me both should be fighting the catholic church and the american right over abstinence-only instead of fighting each other over exactly how HIV testing kits should be distributed.
