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The Pope Wades Into The Condom/HIV Controversy
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, recently stirred up a bit of controversy over statements he made about condom use and their role in the program to control the horrific spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
The Pope was on his way to Cameroon and Angola which are part of sub-Sahara Africa where it is estimated that 22 million people currently are infected with the HIV virus.
Social workers and aid agencies, as well as major organizations such as the UN have been promoting condom use as a way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDs. So it comes as a bit of a shock to hear someone as influential as the Pope suggest the strategy is flawed.
Everyone knows that the Catholic Church is officially against the use of condoms as a method of birth control. But in this case the Pope's comments were aimed at the notion that condom use is an effective weapon against the spread of HIV/AIDS.
In other words, he was questioning the science behind the strategy. He was suggesting that condoms may do more harm than good.
His actual words, according to one report were that "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".
This may sound like a shocking denunciation of a policy that has widespread acceptance around the world. But the fact is, it is perfectly consistent with the standard Catholic position on such matters.
The Church has always taught that the best way to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS (or unwanted pregnancy for that matter) is by encouraging sexual abstinence and fidelity between sexual partners.
Of course this Pope could not leave it at that. The bit about "aggravating" the problem by distributing condoms makes it sound like he was saying, "Handing out condoms promotes promiscuity, and that leads to an even greater infection rate."
Whether this typically old-fashioned sounding message has any relevance in a place like sub-Sahara Africa is another matter. There are real problems on the ground that have to be dealt with - millions of people with HIV/AIDS who are spreading the disease to others.
It sounds rather unrealistic to suggest this will change simply by encouraging people to modify their lives. The spread of the disease is not going to wait for people to change their morality.
Take the ever-present sex workers, for example, and the men who use their services. Sex workers have been one of the main ways the virus has spread. Man sleeps with prostitute. Man gets infected. Man sleeps with wife. Man infects wife.
Is the Pope suggesting that men who use prostitutes need to change their moral values? Does it mean that, rather than distributing condoms to people in danger of infecting others, social workers should focus on promoting lifestyle changes?
Or should they spend their time and energy dealing with the present reality? Doing things like educating people about the importance of protection is a good place to start. Another is encouraging sex workers not to have sex with men who won't use a condom.
On the other hand, the Pope has a point. Even someone as well-placed as the director of Harvard university's HIV Prevention Research Project, Dr. Edward Green, has said "there is not a single country in Africa where HIV prevalence has come down primarily because of condoms."
According to Green the only countries where HIV is decreasing are those where fewer men and women are reporting having sex with more than one partner. In other words, countries where there is greater abstinence and fidelity are making progress against HIV.
To take it one step further, according to Green studies have shown that the people using condoms in certain African countries are those engaging in risky sexual behavior. He also claims that people who have greater access to condoms also tend to have more than one sex partner.
So there is no simple straightforward solution to this problem. Yes, the longer term objective should be to encourage less promiscuity and more faithfulness between sexual partners.
But in the face of a crushing epidemic, short term measures have to be promoted as well. The widespread use of condoms certainly seems like one of them.
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