A pin prick attack is an assault on another person with a needle or syringe tainted with the blood of somebody carrying a blood-borne disease, such as HIV. Although there have been numerous cases of people being attacked with needles and syringes, the idea that people infected with AIDS have deliberately attempted to infect others in this manner is generally considered an urban legend: Real cases of infection of HIV in this manner were typically taken from infected victims rather than from infected attackers.
Origins
editAlthough tales of so-called "needle men" or white slavers, who supposedly injected unsuspecting young girls with morphine before carrying them away into a life of prostitution, had been around since the 1930s, the specific case of infection with blood borne diseases might have had its roots in a 1989 incident where ten teenage girls were arrested and later charged with stabbing numerous women with pins in the Upper West Side area of New York City.[1]
As an email/Internet scare story
editThe rise of the Internet in the 1990s led to the rise of numerous urban legends concerning the pin prick attack, which could be quickly spread via email and discussion forums and which soon assumed a standardized form. The email would take the form of a warning to others that a young person had been visiting a cinema or a night club when the person felt a slight prick on his or her arm. Not taking any notice, the person would carry on with his or her leisure activity, and it was only later that the person would find stuck to his or her clothes or in his or her pocket a badge or sticker carrying the slogan "welcome to the AIDS club", followed a few months later with a positive HIV test.[2] These rumors bear similarities to the so-called AIDS Mary legends of the 1980s, whereby a man would enjoy a one-night stand with a stranger at his house and awaken the next morning to find the stranger gone and the words "Welcome to the AIDS Club" written in red lipstick on his bathroom mirror.[3] However, the American Center for Disease Control has stressed on numerous occasions that it has yet to confirm a single case of HIV as being transmitted in this fashion and has dismissed such emails as a hoax.[4]
Documented examples
editIn 1933, a pin prick attack led to the death of Indian man Amarendra Pandey from plague.[5]
A pin prick attack leading to the deliberate transmission of HIV occurred at the Long Bay Jail in Sydney on July 22, 1990, when prison officer Geoffrey Pearce was attacked by HIV-infected prisoner Graham Farlow, who stabbed him with a syringe full of his own infected blood. Despite immediate medical attention and the "one in 200" chance of being infected, Pearce tested positive for the disease a few months later, and died of an AIDS related illness in 1997 at age 28.[6][7][8]
In 1992, Brryan Jackson was injected with a syringe of HIV-infected blood by his father. Jackson was diagnosed with AIDS that same year.[9]
In 1998, Richard J. Schmidt, a physician in Lafayette, Louisiana, was convicted of attempted murder after injecting a former lover, Janice Trahan, with HIV and Hepatitis C-tainted blood, claiming to be giving her a vitamin shot. Trahan developed both Hep-C and HIV as a result.[10][11]
See also
edit- Criminal transmission of HIV – Intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus
- Needle spiking – Act of secretly injecting people with sedative drugs
- Needlestick injury – Accidental puncture of skin causing contamination
References
edit- ^ Wolff, Craig (November 4, 1989). "10 Teen-Age Girls Held in Upper Broadway Pinprick Attacks". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
- ^ "Urban Legend Zeitgeist: Hypodermic Hysteria". Archived from the original on November 7, 2008. Retrieved August 5, 2009.
- ^ "snopes.com: Welcome to the AIDS club". Msgboard.snopes.com. December 26, 2003. Retrieved November 27, 2012.[unreliable source?]
- ^ "Are these stories true? - (FAQs) - CDC-NCHSTP-Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention". Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. June 19, 2000. Archived from the original on June 21, 2000. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
- ^ "The Indian 'germ murder' that gripped the world". December 24, 2021 – via www.bbc.com.
- ^ "Prisons (Syringe Prohibition) Amendment Bill". Parliament of New South Wales. September 18, 1991. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
- ^ "Hepatitis C thrives in jail". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. June 14, 2001. Retrieved January 29, 2010.
- ^ "1500 pay tribute to fallen prison guard". The Sydney Morning Herald. February 9, 2007. Retrieved January 29, 2010.
- ^ Hancock, Lucy (October 19, 2016). "Brryan Jackson: My father injected me with HIV". BBC. BBC World Service. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
- ^ "Act of Revenge". People. Vol. 51, no. 19. May 24, 1999. Retrieved April 3, 2017.
- ^ "State board denies parole to former Lafayette doctor convicted of injecting mistress with AIDS, hepatitis C". The Acadiana Advocate. June 15, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2017.