The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125426   Message #2836091
Posted By: Royston
11-Feb-10 - 10:04 AM
Thread Name: BS: Death penalty for homosexuality?
Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for homosexuality?
On the subject of risk.

Insurance companies used to ask "Have you had an HIV test?" or similar words with the same effect.

They largely stopped doing that. Actuaries realised that the underwriting risk was not particularly associated with those people that did choose to get tested. They were a somewhat better risk than someone of the same demographic that didn't.

So the question tended to shift to one along the lines of "Have you ever been medically advised to take an HIV test", because they worked out that the greater risk came from people who were contracting other STI's, turning up at the GUM clinic in ignorance, testing positive for Herpes or Chlamyidia or whatever, and were then told that this proved them at high risk of contracting HIV and that they ought to be tested for it for their own safety and that of others.

And France, USA and UK are still top of the UN for late diagnosis - that is the level of undiagnosed - heterosexual HIV.

Food for thought.