Condom sense
Pope
Benedict XVI is wrong
Editorial
from The
Washington Post Read Spanish Version
The
late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone
is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts." This
holds true even for the pope.
While
on a flight to Cameroon on Tuesday to begin a weeklong journey
through Africa, Pope Benedict XVI said, "You can’t resolve [the
AIDS epidemic] with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it
increases the problem." In a perfect world, people would abstain
from having sex until they were married or would be monogamous in
committed relationships. But the world isn’t perfect — and neither
is Pope Benedict’s pronouncement on the effectiveness of condoms in
the battle against HIV/AIDS. The evidence says so.
Are
condoms foolproof protection against infection by HIV, which causes
AIDS? No. Sometimes they break, and sometimes people put them on
incorrectly. Still, doctors on the front lines of the fight against
the AIDS epidemic established long ago that the use of condoms
greatly diminishes the transmission of HIV, the cause of a disease
that has no cure. That the pope chose to question the value of
condoms in fighting the nearly 28-year-old scourge while heading to
the continent whose people are most affected by it is troubling.
According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS,
sub-Saharan Africa is the epidemic’s center, with 67 percent of the
world’s 32.9 million people with HIV and with 75 percent of all AIDS
deaths. Heterosexual intercourse is the "driving force" of
the epidemic.
The
pope’s comment was so alarming that a spokesman for the French
Foreign Ministry said, "We consider that these statements
endanger public health policies and the imperative to protect human
life." What the pontiff said was especially discordant to us
coming a day after the District’s HIV/AIDS Administration released
its startling survey showing that 3 percent of this city’s residents
are living with HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention define a "severe" epidemic in a specific
area as at least 1 percent of the population being infected. To halt
the march of HIV/AIDS, those who have the infection must be treated.
Those who do not have it need all the information and tools possible
to remain HIV-negative. The pope’s denunciation of condoms is of no
help.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031803136.html
