Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Mitar Holod

The provincial council of Papua, Indonesia is considering requiring the forced RFID tagging of local HIV/AIDS patients, along with a severe fine for deliberately infecting another person with the virus.

According to TIME's Jason Tedjasukmana, provincial legislator Dr. John Manangsang "has drafted a new bill that would legalize implanting microchips into HIV-infected people deemed to be purposefully infecting others with the life-threatening virus."

Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz, like many others, is outraged. "For some reason, this joke of a human being thinks that using RFID technology to reduce people to cattle is the best way to stop the rampant HIV/AIDS spread in his province - which is 20 times the national average in Indonesia," he writes. "Because, like everyone knows, punishing an ill person is always a better method to stop an infectious disease than actually attacking the source of the problem..."

"The detail of the scheme has not yet been worked out, but if it gets the vote of the majority in Papua's parliament, it will be enacted next month... anybody found guilty of deliberately infecting another person would be liable to a six-month jail sentence or a fine of about £3,300," writes the Guardian's Sarah Boseley.

More here from CNN ... more here from Reuters ... more here from the Jakarta Post ... more here from the Inquisitr ... more here from USA TODAY ... and more here from Sky News.