Essentially, yes. The naivete of the team was staggering. They thought, at first, that they local people just wanted to see the data and have a copy of it, for pure curiosity's sake. Nope, murder.

Woah, I assumed I misread that. Just common sense/decency says you don't share who has HIV with anyone who does not need to know. True in the first world, especially true in the third world where stigmas can run even stronger.

Yes, this is why we have IRBs, for the exact reasons like this one. When dealing with health and medical stuff, the stakes are usually not this high, but they can be very easily.