Two weeks ago the Pope made some dangerously misleading statements about the role of condoms in HIV prevention. He has stated, under no uncertain terms, that condoms are not only ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus but that they will actually make the situation worse. I am not sure what his reasoning behind this statement is but I suspect it’s something along the lines of “condoms will encourage people to have sex, therefore increasing the rate of infection” or something equally inane.
Clearly the Bishop of Rome is unaware of the numerous scientific studies (for example, see the recently reprinted meta analysis conducted by Weller and Davis-Beaty [1]) on the effectiveness of condoms in HIV prevention. In every case, such studies have concluded that condom use reduces the risk of infection by 90% to 98%. This is unambiguous evidence that condom use reduces the rate of infection. Furthermore, statistics clearly show that the availability of condoms has little impact on the rate of sexual activity. Condoms don’t increase the rate of sexual activity; they increase the rate safe sexual activity. The stupidity of the Popes comments is staggering but they are also dangerous. Just consider the number of christian missionaries in Africa that will be putting his words into practice.
But the case for condoms is even more of a no-brainer. Not only will they effectively prevent the suffering of millions but they will do so at a faction of the cost of treatment. Issuing condoms to nations like Africa is orders of magnitude lower in cost than that of providing the antiretroviral drugs used to treat the disease. At 2.5 cents a unit, the annual cost of supplying condoms to africa is estimated at $47.5 million [2]. The cost of antiretrovirals for the 33 million presently infected with HIV is $92 per year for a total annual cost of approximately 3 billion [3,4]. This is a cost that will only increase as the rate of infection inevitably increases.
At best Pope Benedict XVI is ignorant of the studies that have been conducted to date on this issue. One would hope that a high profile community leader would educate himself in the facts of a situation before commenting. However it’s more likely the case that his holiness is willfully distorting the facts in order to propagate the church’s agenda. Although it’s not surprising to see a holy man misrepresenting scientific findings, not all members of the church are guilty of it. South African Bishop Kevin Dowling publicly supports condom use and you can find an interview with him on the matter here.
[1] Susan C. Weller and Karen Davis-Beaty “Condom effectiveness in reducing heterosexual HIV transmission (Review).” The Cochrane Collaboration (2009). Available at, http://www.thecochranelibrary.com
[2] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7305/139
[3] http://www.avert.org/drugtreatment.htm
[4] http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
The fact is that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent HIV, and when it is used, it is 100% effective. How do you promote abstinence? By showing people the sanctity of the human body, showing people that the aren’t animals, that they have a dignity, that they are not objects. Human sexuality outside the marital bond is disordered, meaning it doesn’t belong. All your studies seem to suggest that humans are animals, just like the apes we came from, and animals will be animals, having sex whenever and wherever. Your studies remove God from the equation.
When abstinence is promoted and encouraged, it has been shown to drop the rate of infection by about 90%.
s/When It Comes To HIV Prevention//
David: Nice attempt at a scientific-sounding argument, complete with some “statistics” even! Unfortunately humans *are* animals, as you can verify by consulting any reputable reference on the subject (I’m excluding those written by people who claim to have close personal relationships with invisible beings). They are also technically objects. I recommend taking some elementary science, math and logic classes, and maybe reading up on the definition of words before using them:
Animal (n)
1. Any member of the kingdom Animalia, comprising multicellular organisms that have a well-defined shape and usually limited growth, can move voluntarily, actively acquire food and digest it internally, and have sensory and nervous systems that allow them to respond rapidly to stimuli.
Object (n)
1. Anything that is visible or tangible and is relatively stable in form.
Sorry, Charlie, we’re more than animals. No wonder you have such a reptilian opinion of humanity.
Sure go ahead and let them have rampant sex, those people in Africa are just animals, like the rest of us.
Really. I guess that’s the difference. We higher forms know that there’s a purpose for sex, that it’s inside of a monogamous male-female relationship, that we don’t need to plug every hole we see, and that we’re here for a better purpose.
But Pope Benedict is ignorant??? Pot calls the kettle black-that’s what that is.
David: For someone who believes there’s too much sex in the world, you sure do talk about it a lot — and in rather graphic terms, I might add. As is often the case with anti-sex religious types one almost wonders if there isn’t an element of jealousy involved. All those people rampantly plugging holes 24/7, and yet you’re not allowed to join in because your god is capricious enough to punish his hapless subjects for acting upon the very urges he arranged for them to possess in the first place. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Actually, not a problem. My marriage bed is quite happy, thanks for asking.
Also, nice to change the subject, I guess I struck a bone or a nerve or something. The meat of my message was that man is on a different level than animals.
Saying that abstinence is the only 100% method for HIV prevention is like saying the only 100% method for not dying of cancer is not getting cancer. It may be conceptually true it’s completely useless in reality. In the real world you have to implement programs that actually work and the simple fact of the matter is that abstinence only programs don’t. Look in a first world nation like the US – there are a number of studies indicating higher rates of pregnancy and STD infection in kids taught abstinence only when compared to kids who are taught about contraceptives. This is a clear indication that the only thing the abstinence programs are doing is increasing the frequency of unsafe sex. Clearly that program isn’t working. Unsafe sex means more pregnancy and more exposure to STDs.
It really isn’t hard to teach people self-discipline. Promoting the sanctity of marriage, continence within the marriage, keeping the purpose of sex as sacred, promoting it from top to bottom has worked, dropping the incidents of HIV from 25% down to under 5% when a concerted effort was made. Statistics lie, and can be skewed any way you want. I can show you just as many studies, long term ones, where promoting contraceptives leads to greater incidences of pregancy. Safe sex means sex with one human being for life after marriage.
Sorry David, but I am calling you on that. Please show me a peer reviewed scientific study that concluded what you just said. And while you are at it, please provide me with a source for your 25% to 5% numbers there.
http://www.uz.ac.zw/science/maths/zimaths/73/aids.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/science/aidsdebate.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=32108
First of all, cnsnews and pbs are clearly not peer reviewed science literature. Neither is the third link.
The importance of the peer review process is that you actually isolate the factor you are interested in. In this case it is abstinence over other methods. In the case of Uganda this has not happened at all since their program was a mixed program. Also, I think it’s hilarious you pull out the Uganda program as your example – it’s called the ABC program with the C standing for condom use. Another large component of their program was getting people tested and educated in safe sex.
Abstinence has not been singled out as the factor and you still have yet to support you claim. Wanna try that again?
David: If statistics lie, why do you keep throwing out percentages? Please pick a position and stick with it for the duration of the paragraph, if possible.
(Also, for your future reference, people who actually understand statistics might find your numbers more persuasive if you provided an indication of the variance of the sample populations rather than just blurting out averages.)