Published November, 2014

Canadian Consensus Statement on HIV and its Transmission in the Context of Criminal Law, Mona Loutfy, Mark Tyndall, Jean-Guy Baril, Julio SG Montaner, Rupert Kaul, Catherine Hankins (2014)

The Canadian Consensus Statement on HIV and its Transmission in the Context of Criminal Law represents the consensus expert opin­ion of dozens of leading Canadian HIV physicians and medical researchers, regarding the possibility of HIV transmission in various circumstances and the health consequences of HIV infection. The statement was developed out of a sense of “professional and ethical responsibility to assist those in the criminal justice system to understand and interpret current medical and scientific evidence regarding HIV”, and “a concern that the criminal law is being used in an overly broad fashion against people living with HIV in Canada because of, in part, a poor appreciation of the scientific under­standing of HIV and its transmission.” As of the date of its publication in 2014, the consensus statement was endorsed by 72 medical doctors and the Canadian Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease.