Senate OKs Bill to Imprison AIDS Carriers Who Give Blood
The Senate on Thursday voted to make it a crime, punishable by up to six years in prison, for people to donate blood if they know they have AIDS or have tested positive for exposure to the AIDS virus.
Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) equated donation of AIDS-contaminated blood to the crime of murder, charging that such a person “just as easily killed (a victim) as if he had pulled out a gun and shot him.”
The bill, by Senate Republican Caucus Chairman John Doolittle of Citrus Heights, sailed to the Assembly on a 26-2 vote over the opposition of Sens. Milton Marks (D-San Francisco) and Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles).
Marks, noting that the bill would create a new crime, argued that a person with AIDS should be dealt with as a medical problem and not as a criminal.
Under the bill, part of an anti-AIDS package, it would be a felony punishable by two, four or six years in state prison for those who donate blood and know that they have tested positive for the AIDS antibody or suffer from AIDS.
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