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Whitfield's penalty was especially severe. His prison has four levels of security: minimum, medium, "closed custody" and maximum. Whitfield lives in the closed-custody section — a much higher-security block than most non-violent offenders, because he was convicted under sex-offender laws. "The penitentiary I'm in caters to rapists, child molesters," he says.

Critics contend the laws are also problematic because they have the potential to prevent people from getting tested; Regan Hoffman, editor-in-chief of Poz magazine, points out, "If you don't know your status, you can't be imprisoned for non-disclosure." Of the 40,000 new HIV infections that have occurred annually in the U.S. over the past four years, approximately half have come from the quarter of a million people who don't know they have HIV.

Because of this, Hoffman believes that the laws are, at best, ineffective in the short term, and at worst, will actually thwart the fight against the disease in the long term.

"One of the best ways to ensure widespread discussion of HIV and disclosure is to destigmatize the disease," she says. "Herpes, once something no one would talk about in polite conversation, is now the subject of commercials on prime-time TV. If we can similarly evolve the public's thinking about HIV so that it is easier to discuss without those that have it fearing stigmatization, rejection, marginalization, discrimination or criminal prosecution, we'd increase the chance that people would feel more inclined to talk about it openly."

The data suggests she's right. Since herpes was brought out into the open, talked about on family-hour television ads for Valtrex and discussed by the Today Show's medical editor, the number of Americans testing positive for the virus dropped by nearly twenty percent.

From top, Anthony Whitfield at his trial in Washington State; Atlanta med student Garry Wayne Carriker's mug shot; Brian Lepley in a photo with his mother.

And then there's the sticky issue of putting the power of prosecution into the hands of jilted lovers. "It wasn't even about the transmission," Whitfield says of the women who testified against him. "It was about the fact that they weren't the only girl in my life. They were mad that I was sleeping with all these other women."

Whitfield doesn't dispute that he infected these women, but he argues that their testimony against him was tainted by their jealousy over his philandering. In Washington, exposing someone to HIV is only a crime if there was "intent to inflict." In other words, the prosecution had to prove that Whitfield actually wanted to infect his partners with HIV — a fairly high legal threshold. But the prosecutor cleared that threshold with the testimony of Whitfield's ex-girlfriends.

"One woman said to the prosecution that she thought if I had it, I would try to give it to as many people as I could," he says. "She said, 'I remember Tony saying if he had it he would give it to as many fuckers as he could.' They got her to say it and that got me convicted. That gave me 'intent.'"

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When Whitfield first arrived at Monroe prison, everyone knew exactly who he was.

"Anybody who didn't know, I don't know where they were in 2004," he says, referring to the media saturation of his trial. Because of this, he was initially shunned by the other prisoners. Two years on, he says he's not treated any differently. "The news made me out to be this hideous thing, going out and intentionally screwing these chicks. But what [the media] never said is that I had a history with some of them, a couple of them all the way back to '97 or '96. I had relationships with five or six of these women."

Whitfield is still legally married to one of the women he infected, a Russian woman who visits him in prison about once a month. He also has four children (by his wife and other women) whom he says are HIV-negative. "I see them once in a while, if they show up."

And because his wife and all of the women who testified against him are white, Whitfield believes the tone of the trial was inflamed by racial bias. Though there's no way to prove Whitfield's race was a factor in his prosecution, a study of the case by Seattle Weekly found that black men are indeed prosecuted disproportionately for criminal transmission of HIV. Nationwide, approximately half of criminal-transmission cases have black male defendants. In Washington State, it's two out of three.

"If I was white, I wouldn't be talking to you on the phone right now," he says. "Everybody said that, even my attorney. Johnnie Cochran said on TV that he wouldn't even try a case in Washington, that's how bad it is. If you're black in Washington, nine times out of ten you're going to the penitentiary."

But with seventeen accusers testifying against him, and an unknown number of other women out there who did not take the stand, Whitfield's charges of racial bias do seem like an act of desperation. At least part of the support for the laws comes from the ominous specter of the HIV-positive predator who intentionally infects as many people as possible, according to Poz editor Hoffman, but that criminal is essentially nonexistent.

"The myth of the HIV predator is just that: a myth," she says. "It is true that there are a few ill-intentioned individuals who have wielded HIV as a deadly weapon, and their stories have gotten much exposure in the media, giving the erroneous impression that people with HIV are monsters out to infect a guileless, innocent public. The reality is that few people living with HIV would wish it on their worst enemy."

But what about someone like Whitfield, who may not have been intentionally infecting women, but was certainly acting with reckless disregard for their wellbeing. Where does the line separating intent and indifference begin to blur?

"The myth of the HIV predator is just that: a myth. The reality is that few people living with HIV would wish it on their worst enemy."

This is where the issue becomes the kind of complex ethical conundrum that doesn't fit well into laws proposed by state legislators who are trying to make their records "tough on crime." For Hoffman, it comes down to personal responsibility: it's a dangerous world, and the answer is not to throw people in prison, but to make stopping the spread of AIDS the responsibility of both those who are positive and those who are negative.

"I believe that all people living with HIV who are aware of their HIV-positive status should disclose their HIV-positive status to their sexual partners 100% of the time," says Hoffman, who is HIV-positive herself. "I also believe that the responsibility for practicing safe sex lies in the hands of every individual engaging in sex, regardless of their HIV-positive status or that of their partner ... People with HIV who know they have the virus should always be open and honest about their HIV status, and at the same time, anyone who engages in sex should make it their responsibility to protect themselves each and every time they have sex, and if they choose not to, they should not solely blame their partner for any adverse outcome."

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