Posted on 03/24/2009 5:10:32 PM PDT by kellynla
A senior Harvard research scientist confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI, who endured heavy criticism for declaring that condom distribution programs worsen the AIDS epidemic in Africa, was actually correct.
Dr. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, told National Review Online last week that despite AIDS activists and media outlets pounding the pope for downplaying the effectiveness of condoms, the science actually supports the Catholic leader's claim.
"The pope is correct," Green told NRO, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments."
"There is," Green added, "a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded 'Demographic Health Surveys,' between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction 'technology' such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by 'compensating' or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology."
Aboard a plane traveling to Yaounde, Cameroon, last week, a French reporter told Benedict that the Catholic approach to combating AIDS – encouraging monogamy within marriage and abstinence before – was often considered unrealistic and ineffective.
According to transcripts released by the Vatican, Benedict responded, "This problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it."
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
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Predictably enough, just as there has been a consistent associaton between greater availability of birth contol pills and higher rates of unwed pregnancy all through the last forty years.
The Pope is correct: Abstinence alone is the proven way to decrease AIDS.
Just today that liberal sap Phil Donahue was bitching about the pope’s stand on this. (He was using it to dodge a question about Obama at Notre Dame.)
Abstinence? You can have all the sex you want with your partner so long as neither of you have sex with others or share needles. Promiscuity is the problem, not sex.
Absolutely true.
But you must remember that there are two factors here beyond AIDS and condoms. First, any technological contraception is verboten, and AIDS is a bystander in that argument. Second, sex outside of traditional marriage, even with one monogamous opposite-sex life-partner, is verboten.
Thus, abstinence. It addresses the entire agenda at once.
CDC and even Wikipedia point out the pregnancy prevention failure rate for non spermicidal condoms is 10-18%. Spermicides do nothing to prevent STDs from being transmitted, and you can get a STD more easily than you can get pregnant.
The odds of failure at Russian roulette with a sixgun is 16%
Why is one foolish and the other safe ????????
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