I see what you're saying, but I'd argue it's more like opposing the introduction of comfortable new rubber seatbelts instead of those ugly, old-fashioned webbing ones. Who cares which one works better; people want the convenience only a rubber can give them.
No. An even better example than my first is opposing the installation of air-bags because they might cause people to stop using seatbelts.
Unlike this rubber seatbelt strawman, these tests actually work, and actually have a use. What is their use? Allowing people to make more informed decisions regarding their sex life and HIV. What is HIV in layman's terms? A death sentence. These chips will potentially allow people to avoid an untimely and painful DEATH, and you oppose them because you hypothesise that stupid people might ignore condoms as a result and get something instead that is either not deadly, or require nothing more than a few shots of penicillin.
Opposing the spread of such devices is beyond comprehension to me. It's flat out abhorrent.
You are wildly misinformed! HIV is not a death sentence in first world countries. It's an awful life to live, granted, but it's still a life to live.
The real concern here is that this test isn't accurate for as long as THREE MONTHS after initial infection, and that during that early stage you at at lease FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more likely to pass on the infection. It's not to be used to check if you're still healthy so now you can go bang that hottie at the bar, it's to be used to see if you have HIV and need to get treated.
Downvotes. Nice. I guess people really don't care about HIV in Africa.
This whole conversation is only serving to make me more and more cynical than I normally like to be. I'm beginning to get the strong impression that there are some members of society that would actually be disappointed if a total cure that could be widely deployed to this plague were found. Like HIV is the enforcer for their idea of proper morals and skin color. I've heard this idea bounced around in LGBT communities before but never really paid it much credence until now.
No, I think where the disagreement lies between you and other posters is that they believe that people are stupid and if they had such a test they wouldn't use condoms... This argument is made for college town and the US (and Europe). And call me cynical but I agree with it, people are dumb, misinformed and would most likely think that they're ok if the test is negative and not bother with condoms. This would actually increase the number of people with aids since people who just contracted aids and are highly contagious will show as negative because they don't have any antibodies yet...
For Third world countries, it's a different matter, I think this test is great. It helps a real problem by providing a convenient way to test for aids to doctors in remote villages and might help slow this awful epidemic...
That argument is absolute shit. The reason people in the demographic of "college towns" use condoms is because they don't want pregnancies, not because they are actually afraid of HIV.
Therefore: 1) This is also an argument for banning The Pill and the like in college towns. Clearly an idiotic idea. 2) Knowing their partner does not have HIV will not prevent people most people from using a condom if they were going to otherwise.
College kids don't worry about HIV to begin with. They will either wear a condom, or won't. Knowing their partner does not have HIV won't effect the decision since that is the default assumption anyway. People inclined to not make this assumption are also intelligent enough to realize that this test has false negatives.
