Thursday, May 29, 2008

HLI Humanae Vitae Priests: The 'Blind Dogmatists' of the Condom Scam





 
    Humanae Vitae Priests
  Human Life International e-Newsletter
for Priests, Deacons, and Seminarians

Volume 01, Number 12 | Thursday, May 29, 2008
  ................................................................................
 
  The 'Blind Dogmatists' of the Condom Scam
By Brian Clowes, PhD

Elites, pundits and celebrities frequently cite the Catholic Church as responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa by her refusal to support condom use as a solution. In fact, condoms help spread AIDS. Humanae Vitae Priests asked Brian Clowes, PhD, HLI's Director of Research, to address this from his exhaustive research on the topic.
- John Mallon, Project Director, Humanae Vitae Priests.

Among my rather eclectic circle of friends are a handful of street preachers who are regularly abused, ridiculed and threatened by those they try to reach. The preachers lament that people just don't seem to respect the Christian faith any more.

I tell them "It might not make you feel any better, but they don't respect pure science either."

Nowhere is this blindness more apparent than in the frenetic efforts to slow or halt the African AIDS epidemic with condoms. When the Catholic Church attempts to teach and preach about the only realistic solution to this crisis - abstinence and faithfulness - it is mocked and attacked as "blind" and "dogmatic" by the very people who are making a lot of money from distributing billions of condoms.

For example, Peter Piot, head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said that, "When priests preach against using contraception, they are committing a serious mistake which is costing human lives." The Guardian's Polly Toynbee backed him up, claiming that, "In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young AIDS orphans are today's immediate victims of the curia."

AIDS really began to take hold in the Sub-Sahara in the early 1990s. In response, a vast legion of international population control groups, led by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank, and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) began to distribute literally tons of condoms in the region. Although pro-lifers vociferously disagreed with their methods and their morality, we at least conceded that their motives were good.

But now we have ample reason to question their motivations as well.

Anyone who has traveled in Africa over the past decade has seen the ubiquitous condom billboards leering at them from every direction. Stone walls near sports fields, schools and anywhere else people congregate are plastered with pro-condom messages. The population controllers even sport condom advertisements painted on their vehicles or on their wheel covers. In the larger cities, public condom demonstrations and giveaways are everywhere.

All of these advertisements and activities have one thing in common. They all claim that using condoms will make you "safe," and none of them mention that condoms fail very often indeed.

The "family planner's bible," Contraceptive Technology, (CT) provides the most critical piece of information that shows how condoms actually promote the spread of AIDS. According to a summary of fifteen studies using more than 25,000 condoms, CT found that they broke 4.63 percent of the time and slipped off 3.40 percent of the time, for a total of 8.03 percent.

This means that, if a person uses a condom only ten times, he has a 57 percent chance of having at least one failure. After fifty uses, he has a 99 percent chance of having at least one failure and a 39% chance of having at least five failures. If he uses 100 condoms, a typical amount in one year, he will have at least one failure and has a 91 percent chance of having at least five failures.

The distribution of Catholics and Muslims in Africa provides further proof of the condom's inability to stop AIDS. In African countries with a high percentage of Catholics and Muslims, who generally do not use condoms, the adult HIV infection rate is very low. In nations with low percentages of Catholics and Muslims, the adult HIV infection rates are high.

In the five African countries with the most Catholics and Muslims (averaging 99% of the populations), the average current adult HIV infection rate is only 0.09 percent, or about one in 1,100 adults.

In the five African countries with the least Catholics and Muslims (averaging only 10% of the populations), the average current adult HIV infection rate is a staggering 16.20 percent, or one in six, a rate 180 times higher.

The Ugandan example has proven that the key to stopping AIDS is not a failure-prone, less-than-paper thin layer of latex, but modifying human sexual behavior. Uganda's emphasis on abstinence and faithfulness has led to its adult HIV infection rate plunging from nearly one in four in the early 1990s to about six percent now, with countries pushing condoms continuing to see a rise in infection rates.

Yet, despite the clear evidence, the population controllers are still doing everything they can do defund abstinence programs and ramp up condom distribution.

Who are the true "blind dogmatists" here?

 


 

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