Blood Criminals

When HIV hit America in the 80s, it decimated the LGBT communities, and it forever changed the course of national sex education. But what happened to the people who survived the epidemic? What happens to people who are diagnosed today?

This book tracks the lives of six people in America as they deal with all the cultural problems associated with it: incomplete sex education, diagnosis without links to care, abuse from criminal and legal systems, dehumanization, and suicide "requests" from people online. Jonathan W. Thurston, a gay journalist from Michigan, follows these individuals and their stories. In these pages, he shows nurses in biohazard suits, people locked away for not disclosing their status (even if they did), and the loss of those the medical system failed. When you have HIV, you lose personhood. When you have HIV, you are labeled a biohazard.

This is the story of America's blood criminals.