laconic1

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...e/needle_stick


Wow, just wow. I can't imagine an eight year old potentially being given an uncurable disease by another student. I can't imagine what the parents must be thinking right now. Granted we dont have all the information yet, but how did the girl manage to stick 19 kids before being caught!

hulk

It's a little pin-prick. I doubt any of the kids realised what was going on, really. But still, holy crap!

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maleficent

I cannot imagine what is going thru the minds of thost 19 sets of parents...I'm sure the chances of an infection are nil, but what if the 3rd kid who got stuck, had HIV, it's not outside the realm of possibility, then the other 16 kids now are exposed to it...

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Meditrina

Wow. I cannot even imagine what is going through the minds of those parents. I would be so scared and upset, and angry and mad, etc.

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raeanna74

Wow - odd. I can't imagine what an 8 yr old would be thinking about this and why she'd do it. Probably simply for attention.

One more reason I'M homeschooling.

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Phage

Youch, thems the breaks. Hopefully the one positive test was a fluke, or else they need to do more looking (where did the infection come from, who else has HIV?). As for the child, I am sure there was very little thought involved. She probably had not considered the danger of disease, but still... thats a pretty mean thing to do even if perfectly safe.

Cynthetiq

One more reason I'm not having kids.

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Gilda

I'm reluctant to jump to conclusions, so I have to just wonder how she got ahold of her mother's testing supplies. Used testing sticks are a biohazard, and there are very specific methods you're supposed to use for disposal. No 8-year-old should ever be anywhere near a diabetics supplies, used or not.

But we shouldn't be surprised. We're living in a time of 1st graders bringing a gun to school to kill a classmate.

I would also like to add that, despite the above bit of cynicism, school is one of the safest places for a child to be in the US, and incidents like this make the news because they are rare.

Phage

I think it is reasonable to jump to the conclusion that the child did not know the depth of the danger with what she was doing, and the the parent did not intend for the child to get into her stuff. There are plenty of things that are "biohazards" that are used every day, and we should not be really surprised that kids sometimes get into places they should not be.

This situation was very dangerous and could be severely damaging, but biological waste occurs. Heck, have you ever seen a kid alone with a Sharpie?

Cuatela

Everything has the potential for danger if used incorrectly, even certain toys. The fact that the child used it as a weapon is not uncommon either. I've seen a lot of kids using toys as weapons (and I would imagine she thought the needle to be a weapon). The only thing I don't understand is how she managed to do it so much (as crazybill already said).

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Strange Famous

frightening... but without further information its hard to form a real understanding.

I am baffled that the authorities would make public the results of a HIV test on one of the children also.

From what I know, that chances of re-infection are very low... but of course it was be terrible for all the families and childen (insofar as they understand) involved. Questions also need to be asked about how a 8 year old gets hold of diabetes testing equipment (I know what these pens look like, my mom is diabetic).. certainly I would investihgating if this girl should be taken into care, not just moved to a different school.

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KinkyKiwi

..when i have kids ..i am never..ever...ever..putting them in school. i'll home school em till their 40 if i have to!

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Aborted

Of course the hows and the whys of this need to be looked into, but I can't see why some people would use this as a reason/excuse to home school their kids. A point for another thread perhaps, but the world won't get any nicer while people lock their kids away from it for a few years.

Phage

If they revealed that only one returned a positive it is likely that they revealed the results from them all, it is just that the others were all negative. Privacy is good to preserve but not if it causes a danger to others and this would be a case where hiding a positive test could be deadly.

Zeraph

Not that surprising why she might do it. When my mom was really young she found a razor blade and sliced up her sister saying "Oooh pretty red" while she did it thinking she was painting. (Her sister let her do it for a couple minutes before she noticed any pain)

jorgelito

Bad parenting: HOw did the kid get a hold of her mom's needle? She obviously got the idea of sicking her classmates by watching her mom stick herself.

The mom should have been extra careful especially since she has AIDS or HIV positive...

Phage

Umm, where did you get the idea that the mother had HIV?

F-18_Driver

I had the same question. I also find myself much less eager to accuse others of "bad parenting," now that I have seen how fast an 8-year-old can get into something he/she isn't supposed to.

jorgelito

Hmmm.... I must have read it wrong. I thought the mom had HIV and was a diabetic - then the girl took her needle and stuck other kids with it so on and so forth. So you can see where my thought process would lead.

So, where did the HIV come from?

Demeter

I'm wondering if this girl just walked around stabbing kids, or if they were 'playing' with it, pretending to test their blood? I'mm assuming it wasn't an attack, because after one shrill scream, the teachers would have aprehended that needle fast. I get the impression that nothing happened until a kid inadvertantly mentioned to their parents what happened.

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urbandev

Those things look like a pen with a botton on it, you pull the top out to cock it and press the button to engage the needle which comes out about a 64th of an inch and goes right back in, quite fun to play with...

i had an experience close to this back in 7th grade in 97.

a friend left hers at my house, so i took it to school to return it to her, where some dumb fuck pulled it out of my binder and poked the kid next to him a few times and the kid across the way...I got in trouble for it, it was a ridiculous mess...and eventually (among many other cuases) led to my expullsion,

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Sweetpea

For this child, my bet is that the actions taken was a cry for help.
For many, attention is still attention whether it's positive or negative.

Sweetpea

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Phage

A cry for help? Why can't a kid put thumbtacks in a chair just because they want to see people jump, rather than "calling out for attention"?

Sweetpea

Wanting to see a reaction from another human being and being the cause of said reaction, wanting people to know you are the cause.

How more simple can that get. A call for attention.

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Cuatela

I'm not that surprised it happened. I used to open the "child-proof" bottles just to prove I could, and I have a harder time opening them now than I did when I was 9.

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IanSturgill

I would beat that little girls ass. And you could throw such a guilt trip on her later in life. "carol ann, why did have to infect me with HIV?" HA.

AngelicVampire

She is 8, old enough to understand right and wrong, throw the book at her if she has actually infected someone otherwise just 19 charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

/me did report assaults at school, stuff got done, just because its at school or the kid is too stupid to understand does not give them the right to ignore the law. As a note I never misbehaved at school either, right and wrong were known from a very young age.

trache

That may not be neccessarily true. Does anyone remember watching the episode of E.R. wherein two young males were involved in a shootout over a pair of shoes? The kid who shot his friend (at the end of the episode) really and truly could not tell right from wrong; he really didn't know what the consequences were, and he did not know that his friend actually died because of what he did (although IIRC he was told later in the episode).

It all comes down to your upbringing and your environment. This girl may not have known the consequences of her actions.

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Vincentt

Some of you people must have never seen one of these testing needles... you make it out like she went on a bloody knife rampage.

Hell, I bet the other kids were letting her do it.
Each taking their turn to see what it feels like.

And I really doubt the HIV claim, just something to heat up the story.

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clavus

I'm calling BULLSHIT on this one. What HIV test can you give that detects it the same day you get infected?

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Demeter

Obviously the child was previously infected, however, I would imagine there is some concern that those chioldren pricked after the HIV+ child may now become infected.

On another note, I don't recall seeing any updates on this storyin the news. Has it dropped out of existance? Can anyone fill me in.

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Phage

In answer to clavus, the kind of test that gives results the same day as infection are probably inaccurate. If I recall correctly tests for HIV are done several times over in order to make what might be a 98% correct test yield a highly accurate result. Such a quick test probably errs on the side of caution and gives a false positive now and then, much more often than it will give a false negative.

It is not obvious that any of the children are infected as the only source of information was published on the same day of the incident, which is too soon to get any accurate test results. I would predict that none of the children had HIV after all the tests came in, and so there was nothing worthy of being reported.

streak_56

My thoughts exactly, the kid is eight, shes curious. But why would it be her fault when a needle shouldn't be laying around for her to bring to class.