Embedded Surveilling of Indonesian AIDS Patients

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Lawmakers in Indonesia's remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips -- part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease. Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan Monday.  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 with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

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, which blames lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.

Criminalizing legal, bad, behavior is not the duty of the government -- that correction belongs to parents and churches -- and if we pay for the public welfare of the citizenry, then we need to educate and encourage changes in behavior instead of punishing the misbegotten and the ill with fines and a watchful following.