Pope: Condoms no help against AIDS in Africa, condoms might make things worse.

[Syt]

Guardian: Pope claims condoms could make African Aids crisis worse

Pontiff's remarks on first visit to continent outrage health agencies trying to halt spread of HIV and Aids

The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.

The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.

Benedict XVI made his comments as he flew to Cameroon for the first leg of a six-day trip that will also see him travelling to Angola.

The timing of his remarks outraged health agencies trying to halt the spread of HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 22 million people are infected.

The Roman Catholic church encourages sexual abstinence and fidelity to prevent the disease from spreading, but it is a policy that has divided some clergy working with Aids patients.

The pontiff, speaking to journalists on his flight, said the condition was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, said that if the Pope was serious about preventing new HIV infections he would focus on promoting wider access to condoms and spreading information about how best to use them.

Hodes, the director of policy, communication and research for the campaign group, added: "Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans."

It is not the first time the Pope has made public remarks on the HIV/Aids outbreak ravaging the continent.

Shortly after becoming pontiff in 2005, he told senior Catholic clergy from Africa that, while the disease was a "cruel epidemic", it could not be cured through using condoms.

Addressing bishops from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho who had travelled to the Vatican for papal audience, he said: "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids."

He also warned them that African life was under threat from a number of factors, including condoms.

"It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality," he added.

More than two-thirds – 67% – of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Three-quarters of all Aids deaths in 2007 happened there.

Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic church, which competes with Islam and evangelical churches.

The Pope also said today that he intended to make an appeal for "international solidarity" for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn.

He said that, while the church did not propose specific economic solutions, it could give "spiritual and moral" suggestions.

Describing the current crisis as the consequence of "a deficit of ethics in economic structures", he added: "It is here that the church can make a contribution."

Benedict dismissed claims that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to ultra-conservatives led to him lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.

"The myth of my solitude makes me laugh," he said, adding that he could count on the network of friends and aides he saw every day.

In a letter to Catholic bishops, released last week, he made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson.

While acknowledging that errors had been made in handling the affair, Benedict said he was saddened that he was criticised "with open hostility" even by those who "should have known better".

I was also kind of flabbergasted to learn that there's a Vatican commission trying to determine whether it's ok to use condoms for married couples with one partner HIV positive.

[Fate]

Excellent news. Over the long run, religious nutters who actually listen to the Pope on the use of condoms will decrease in number relative to the general population.

[Martinus]

This is fucking criminal. The motherfucking asshole must be bitter that during the last Holocaust he was only an extra, and it ended too soon anyway, so now he wants to have another but with him as the major star.

[Neil]

This is fucking criminal. The motherfucking asshole must be bitter that during the last Holocaust he was only an extra, and it ended too soon anyway, so now he wants to have another but with him as the major star.

You're fucking criminal.  The pope is horribly wrong, but he's still a better person than you are.

But don't worry, there's no force on Earth that will prevent you from getting the AIDS that you so rightly deserve.

[DGuller]

Excellent news. Over the long run, religious nutters who actually listen to the Pope on the use of condoms will decrease in number relative to the general population.

I wouldn't be that hopeful.  The main effect of the no-condoms policy by devout Catholics is the much higher birth rate, which more than counter-acts the mere tens of million that AIDS claims.  There is also a bonus effect of his AIDS policies spilling over and affecting non-Catholics as well.  I think the Pope is coming out well ahead.

[Grey Fox]

Really, we think the solution to AIDS is condoms?

[HVC]

Pope hates sex? Really. Shocker.

[Syt]

He has gone on to say that abortion remains a non-option, even if the life of the mother or child are in danger. Incest, rape etc. are also no valid reasons for having an abortion.

[Alexandru H.]

From NationalReview

From Saint Peter's Square to Harvard Square
Media coverage of papal comments on AIDS in Africa is March madness.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

'We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working."

So notes Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, in response to papal press comments en route to Africa this week.

Benedict XVI said, in response to a French reporter's question asking him to defend the Church's position on fighting the spread of AIDS, characterized by the reporter as "frequently considered unrealistic and ineffective":

    I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising 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 humanization 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 those who are suffering, a readiness — even through personal sacrifice — to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.

"The pope is correct," Green told National Review Online Wednesday, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments. He stresses that "condoms have been proven to not be effective at the 'level of population.'"

"There is," Green adds, "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."

Green added: "I also noticed that the pope said 'monogamy' was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than 'abstinence.' The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates (the other major factor is male circumcision)."

And while, as Travis Kavulla writes from Kenya today, the international media will ignore all sorts of fascinating new stories about church and civilizational growth in favor of a sexier, albeit way-too-familiar storyline, Green has some encouraging news: The pope is not alone. "More and more AIDS experts are coming to accept the above. The two countries with the worst HIV epidemics, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns to discourage multiple and concurrent partners, and to encourage fidelity."

The pope added during that Q&A, "I would say that our double effort is to renew the human person internally, to give spiritual and human strength to a way of behaving that is just towards our own body and the other person's body; and this capacity of suffering with those who suffer, to remain present in trying situations."

We need to, in other words, treat people as people. Reason with them and show them there is a better way to live, respectful of themselves and others. It's a common-sense message that isn't madness whether you're in Africa or dealing with hormonal American teenagers. It's a hard message to hear over the same-old silly debates, parodies, and dismissals. But it's one that is based on real life—and acknowledged not just in Saint Peter's Square but in Harvard Square.

The Pope was right. No surprise, of course...  8)

[The Brain]

Yes, monogamy is a solution that sub-Saharan Africa is embracing with a passion.

[Martinus]

LOL Alexandru H. posts some partial, biased article to prove the Pope was correct. How laughable. How about posting something from a reputable source? Like, this article from BBC which has all Western governments and scientific organizations cutting the Pope a new one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7950671.stm

[Alexandru H.]

LOL Alexandru H. posts some partial, biased article to prove the Pope was correct. How laughable. How about posting something from a reputable source? Like, this article from BBC which has all Western governments and scientific organizations cutting the Pope a new one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7950671.stm

So Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies is not a reputable source but a western politician is? I don't get my AIDS news from confirmed gays, it's like learning about communism from Lenin...

[Martinus]

National Review is a conservative rag that is not a credible source.

[Martinus]

Here's a joint statement by WHO, UNAIDS and UNFPA, according to which condom use remains the primary and best available HIV infection prevention method:

http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/Resources/FeatureStories/archive/2009/20090319_preventionposition.asp

[Martinus]

Pope hates sex? Really. Shocker.

He ain't playing the game. He ain't making the rules.