¶ … HIV and duty to warn for counselors: Does Tarasoff apply?," Stanard and Hazler confront the ethical dilemma posed by a counselor having knowledge that a patient is HIV positive but that the patient has not disclosed his status to his sexual partners. In the hypothetical scenario discussed in the article, the patient is a bisexual male who has sex with his wife and with male partners. The article does not make it clear whether the patient's wife is aware that he is bisexual and is having sex with multiple partners. Generally, information disclosed to a counselor is protected under confidentiality. However, in Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California, 1976, the Supreme Court held that a counselor who knew or should have known that a client posed a danger to another person had a duty to warn the intended victim (Stanard & Hazler, 1995). The question posed by this article is whether the risk that the patient will transmit HIV...
Even safe sexual practices, while reducing the risk of transmission, do not eliminate the risk. Moreover, although there have been significant medical advances in the treatment of HIV / AIDS, the reality remains that for most people diagnosed as HIV positive who develop AIDS, the sentence is a death sentence. However, because consensual sexual partners are, or should be, aware of the risk of contracting HIV through unsafe sexual practices, there is an argument that they assume the risk of doing so when engaging in unsafe sexual practices. One ethical question presented is whether an assumed risk relieves the counselor of the duty to warn that was outlined in Tarasoff. Furthermore, the duty to warn has generally been interpreted to mean the…
