This is getting oh so boring and predictable.
“It is my belief believe that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. … The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanisation of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with the suffering, a readiness – even through personal sacrifice – to stand by those who suffer”.
So of course we get headlines like “Pope’s attack on condoms sickens Aids campaigners.“
In the past we have got many charges of the pope being responsible for millions of deaths in Africa. I would simply say “Name one country that reduced the HIV infection rate by promoting condoms.” Beeeeeeeep – Time out. The example of Uganda being the only country to reduce infection rates by promoting abstinence and fidelity is a story not allowed to be mentioned.
Mark Shea posted this a couple years ago.
The West’s commitment to sexual promiscuity is a religion that people will both kill and die for.
AIDS victims in 1987: Philippines 135 / Thailand 112
In 1991 the WHO predicted the Philippines would have 80,000 to 90,000 cases and Thailand 60,000 to 80,000 AIDS victims.
Thailand promoted the use of condoms in massive campaigns where Catholic Philippines promoted ‘Abstinence’ and ‘Be faithful’.
The prognosis of the WHO was wrong for both countries:
1999: Philippines 1,005 / Thailand 755,000 AIDS victims
Source: British Medical Journal, volume 328, April 10th 2004
As the Pope mentioned it is certainly not just slogans that will help. Saying be abstinent and be faithful will do little if any good if everything else in the society is saturated with sex and selling sex. Abstinence education in schools in not very effective when the media blares a discordant message 24/7. When the whole society is oriented towards a contrary message we can hardly expect any education to be effective. The Pope’s twofold advice will pretty much go unfollowed as people follow the false and deadly idol of sex without consequences.
As is usually the case the American Papist has excellent coverage.
Amy Welborn also has an in depth post on the subject.
Via Patrick Madrid is this excellent video with Catholic writer Joanna Boogle.
Diogenes posts:
The Association of Compassionate Christian Caregivers today severely criticized traditional Catholic teaching on marital “love” and called upon the churches to encourage wife-beating Africans to take the “prudent, practical steps” to reduce the risk of HIV infection when assailing their spouses.
“The science is not in doubt” says Fizzy Osbourne, spokesman for the International Planned Widowhood Federation, “all the evidence shows that bare fists used to pummel infected spouses cause skin ruptures that increase the rate of transmission to the uninfected partner.”
AIDS experts advise uninfected wife-beaters to don leather bag-mitts — ideally on top of and in addition to standard latex gloves — before striking their HIV-positive wives. Knuckle abrasion and random laceration can be reduced by as much as 94%, which significantly decreases exposure of the aggressor to contaminated blood. ..
7 comments
Mister Jester,
You and your readers may also wish to take a look at this disturbing article from THE EAST AFRICAN. It details UNAids attempt to silence a study which it had commissioned because they didn’t like the politically unpalatable information it contained:
In 2003 Dr Hearst and his research assistant Sanny Chen, then of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, carried out an extensive literature review commissioned by UNAids on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV virus in sub Saharan Africa and other developing regions.
The initial report, titled: Condoms for Aids prevention in the developing world: A review of the scientific literature, concluded that although condoms were about 80 per cent to 90 per cent effective as a public health strategy in halting the spread of Aids in some concentrated epidemics (epidemics affecting men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and commercial sex workers) in places like Thailand and Cambodia, condoms were seen as ineffective in preventing the spread of HIV/Aids in generalised epidemics like those taking place in Eastern and Southern Africa.
“These findings surprised us and were not what UNAids wanted to hear at all,” recalls Dr. Hearst who says that his report provoked serious debate within UNAids.
Efforts were made by UNAids to edit the Hearst/Chen report into something that might be more politically palatable to the organisation. In fact, Dr Hearst was shown various drafts of the heavily edited document, which UNAids was expected to publish but in the end never did.
Instead they released their own separate statement about how wonderful and effective condoms are. This did not have our names on it, nor would I have wanted it to,” says Hearst. “It made no reference to our review or our report. I was never given any explanation for this decision.”
But the conclusions reached by the Hearst/Chen study would have been of major importance to policy makers in Africa, the West and elsewhere in the developing world; Aids agencies; Aids activists; and the general public at large in terms of policies formulation and programme implementation to combat the spread of Aids.
However, this crucial report was not made public by UNAids. According to UNAids insiders, the organisation rewrote the entire report — even removing the names of the researchers — and published something quite different from what they had submitted.
Here is a link to the 4 page article:
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/525956/-/rku48lz/-/index.html
Apparently, some people choose to ignore the facts.
Here in the Philippines, there is now a pending Congress House bill which seeks to promote contraceptives using taxpayer’s money. The reason given among other things, is to help control the
spread of AIDS. Pray for us to help fight this bill.
“The example of Uganda being the only country to reduce infection rates by promoting abstinence and fidelity is a story not allowed to be mentioned.”
“Uganda used a policy combining abstinence, fidelity and – only if necessary – the use of condoms, to achieve a significant reduction in the spread of HIV. “
-from that bastion of atheist communism, the BBC!
The quote from Mark Shea (seen all over the web) would be wonderful if it were true. I have just spent 1.5h searching through the archive of British Medical Journal and there is no article citing those facts. Volume 328 is completely available on-line after (very) short registration.
Mark Shea’s information came from one of his readers. The information itself seems to be based upon a comprehensive report on the Human Life International website:
The second real-life example of how condoms fail to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS is presented by the Philippines and Thailand, two Southeastern Asian nations with approximately the same populations.
In 1984, the first case of HIV was detected in both of these nations. By 1987, Thailand had 112 cases of AIDS, and the Philippines had 135 cases. In 1991, the World Health Organization predicted that, by 1999, Thailand would have 70,000 deaths from the disease, and the Philippines would have 85,000 deaths.
In 1991, both nations took concrete and comprehensive measures against the spread of the HIV virus — but both directed their efforts in completely different directions.
The Thai Minister of Health enacted a “100% Condom Use Program.” All brothels were required to have supplies of condoms, and condom vending machines were installed in all supermarkets, bars, restaurants, and other public gathering places. This program was widely accepted and implemented by the people of Thailand.
Two years later, Rene Bullecer, M.D., received authorization from the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to establish the organization AIDS‑Free Philippines as its official program to combat HIV/AIDS nationwide. The government signed on to this effort as well.
By the end of 2003, the disparity in the effectiveness of both types of programs had become glaringly obvious, as shown in this table; [46]
I cannot reproduce the table but the numbers are as follows:
Adults and children living with HIV-Thailand (570,000); Philippians (9,000).
Aids deaths in 2003-Thailand (58,000); Philippians (500).
HIV infection rate per million-Thailand (9,072); Philippians (113).
This table shows that the Thai HIV infection rate is eighty times higher than the Filipino HIV infection rate.
The current rate of HIV infection in the United States, with all of our sex education, all of our sexual freedom, all of our advanced antiviral drugs, and all of our billions of condoms, is 3,900 per million, thirty times higher than in the Philippines.[47]
What lesson does this teach us?
USAID has concluded that the reason that the Philippines has such a low incidence of HIV/AIDS is that youth have a very high rate of abstinence and married people largely remain faithful to their spouses. The USAID report grudgingly admitted that “The Catholic Church must be credited with influencing sexual behavior.”[48]
Sources:
[46] Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Country-by-country HIV/AIDS statistics can be accessed http://www.unaids.org/en/Regions_Countries/Countries/default.asp.
[47] Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). “United States of America: Epidemiological Fact Sheet on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” 2004 Update.
[48] C. Hermann, E.C. Green, J. Chin, M. Taguiwalo, and C. Cortez. “Evaluation of the Philippines AIDS Surveillance and Education Project.” USAID/Philippines, May 8, 2001
Thank you Dim, I’ll check those sources.
The truth shall set you free, but some want to be imprisoned in their self-delusions.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTNlNDc1MmMwNDM0OTEzMjQ4NDc0ZGUyOWYxNmEzN2E=