Many amendments have been made to existing legislation recently, but two of the proposed amendments to the Infectious Diseases Act (Cap. 137, 2003 Rev. Ed. Sing) (IDA) - designed to govern the management of infectious diseases- have garnered most attention.

Use of leftover treatment samples
The first expands section 7 of the existing IDA by empowering the Director of Medical Services to obtain leftover samples drawn in the course of regular medical treatment, to determine the prevalence or incidence of infectious diseases in Singapore. With this amendment, any leftover sample taken from your body by a doctor for tests can be appropriated without your consent or your knowledge, regardless of the purposes of the tests. No one disputes the usefulness of public infectious disease research, but the ideal of ownership of one’s body and determinant power over the external uses of any part of it is offended. Existing legislation allows for opting-out from organ transplants and self-determination of where and what your body is used for after death. Shouldn’t you also determine what your body’s samples are used for?

AIDS law
The second amendment relates to the criminalisation of sexual activity by persons infected with HIV or AIDS. Presently, under section 23, it is an offence for someone who knows he has HIV or AIDS to have sexual intercourse with others without informing them of the risks. The amended section extends this criminal liability to anyone who “does not know” they have HIV or AIDS, but “has reason to believe he has, or has been exposed to the risk of contracting, AIDS or HIV”. This amendment is problematic for various reasons. Fundamentally, it drastically alters the requirement from actual knowledge to having “reason to believe”, which is in itself undefined and thus open to a very broad range of interpretation. This conceivably extends to any individual who has had casual sexual intercourse even once.

Secondly, although arguably in the public interest to prevent abhorrent infection of others with a terminal disease, the idea that one could be guilty for spreading a disease one was unaware of having could be extended to any number of life-threatening illnesses and encompass a vast number of people.

While the idea of punishment for people who intentionally inflict HIV on unsuspecting victims is fairly universally acceptable, there is no way to contract HIV unless one actual consents to sexual intercourse, bar rape. If the offending party does not know of his infection and bears no malice toward the other party, how much does the other party deserve the protection of the law, especially since they consent to the act knowing that the risk exists in any such activity?

We should be mindful of how far we go to protect society at the expense of the individual.

Smith Benjamin Yiwen is a second year law student and an associate editor of SLR.