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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
Personally, I think that legal prostitution with health benefits and regulations is a good thing.
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That's not the question. The question is simply does legalizing prostitution raise or lower the AIDS infection rate - all other variables equal.
I read the studies cited by jag and found the connection between the legality or illegality of prostitution to be tenuous. Thailand, where prostitution has been legal since before the AIDS epidemic, had the highest rate of AIDS infection in the world (outside of Africa). Only after the government made AIDS prevention a public policy matter with a massive budget did the rate go down. Public policy programs (awareness/prevention/treatment) are NOT limited to environments where prostitution is legal.
And until someone explains why many countries in Latin America where prostitution is illegal have a fraction of the AIDS rate of Latin American countries where prostitution is legal then I will continue to assert that there is reason to question the claim that legalizing it lowers it.
I honestly can't be sure what effect legalized prostitution has on the rate of AIDS infection and nothing I've seen in this thread other than a lot of wishful thinking, selective evidence picking and ignoring data that refutes the hypothesis justifies a conclusion either way.