GENEVA - Swiss AIDS experts said Thursday that some people with HIV who are on stable treatment can safely have unprotected sex with non-infected partners.

The Swiss National AIDS Commission said patients who meet strict conditions, including successful antiretroviral treatment to suppress the virus and who do not have any other sexually transmitted diseases, do not pose a danger to others.

The proposal, published this week in the Bulletin of Swiss Medicine, astonished leading AIDS researchers in Europe and North America who have long argued that safe sex with a condom is the single most effective way of preventing the spread of the disease — apart from abstinence.

"Not only is (the Swiss proposal) dangerous, it's misleading and it is not considering the implications of the biological facts involved with HIV transmission," said Jay Levy, director of the Laboratory for Tumor and AIDS Virus Research at the University of California in San Francisco.

Decision up to HIV-negative partner
The Swiss scientists took as their starting point a 1999 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which showed that transmission depends strongly on the viral load in the blood.

The Swiss said other studies had also found that patients on regular anti-AIDS treatment did not pass on the virus, and that HIV could not be detected in their genital fluids.

"The most compelling evidence is the absence of any documented transmission from a patient on antiretroviral therapy," said Pietro Vernazza, head of infectious diseases at the cantonal hospital of St.Gallen in eastern Switzerland and one of the authors of the report. [ full story ]

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If you were HIV- would you have unprotected sex with an HIV+ partner that said they were on the treatment and not able to transmit the disease?

Do you think this information will give "permission" to some on the treatment not to disclose their status to others, thinking they can't transmit the disease?