Indonesian state weighs plan to implant microchips in AIDS patients

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/story/907604.html

Indonesian state weighs plan to implant microchips in AIDS patients
By NINIEK KARMINI
The Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia | Lawmakers in the remote province of Papua have are supporting a bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips.

The move would be part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease, but local health workers and AIDS activists called the plan “abhorrent.”

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of “sexually aggressive” patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others.

The technical and practical details still need to be hammered out, but if the proposed legislation gets a majority vote as expected, it will be enacted next month, he and others said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country and has one of Asia’s fastest-growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections out of 235 million people, fueled mainly by intravenous drug users and prostitution.

But Papua, the country’s easternmost and poorest province with a population of about 2 million, has been hardest hit. Its case rate of almost 61 per 100,000 is 15 times the national average, according to internationally funded research.

[20score]

1. Damn, technology plus authoritarianism. Never a good mix.

K&R

[anonymous171]

2. If only we had paid more attention to AIDS before it became a global pandemic.

Fucking Ronald Reagan.