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Many leading health experts have warned against depending on condoms for protection against AIDS and other STDs. Here’s a sampling of their comments:

"You just can’t tell people it’s all right to do whatever you want as long as you wear a condom. It (AIDS) is just too dangerous a disease to say that."
Quote from: ¾ Dr. Harold Jaffee, chief of epidemiology, National Centers for Disease Control

"Simply put, condoms fail. And condoms fail at a rate unacceptable for me as a physician to endorse them as a strategy to be promoted as meaningful AIDS protection."
Quote from: ¾ Dr. Robert Renfield, chief of retro-viral research, Walter Reed Army Institute

"Relying on condoms for ‘protection’ can mean lifelong disease, suffering, and even death for you or for someone you love."
Quote from: ¾ Dr. Andre Lafrance, Canadian physician and researcher

"Saying that the use of condoms is ‘safe sex’ is in fact playing Russian roulette. A lot of people will die in this dangerous game."
Quote from: ¾ Dr. Teresa Crenshaw, member of the U.S. Presidential AIDS Commission and past president of the American Association of Sex Educators

Holes in Condoms . . .

STDs are very tiny organisms, minuscule in size compared to sperm. These super-small viruses can get through a hole in a condom much more easily than sperm can. For example, HIV (the AIDS-causing virus) is so small that two million of the disease-causing agents could crowd on the period at the end of a sentence.

In 1993 the University of Texas analyzed the results of 11 different studies that had tracked the effectiveness of condoms to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus. The average condom failure rate in the 11 studies for preventing transmission of the AIDS virus was 31%.

One reason condoms fail in preventing the transfer of AIDS is that latex condoms have tiny intrinsic holes called "voids." Sperm is larger than the holes, but the AIDS virus is 50 times smaller than these tiny holes which makes it easy for the virus to pass through [Source: Dr. C. M. Roland, editor of Rubber Chemistry and Technology]. To give you an idea of how easy it would be for the virus to pass through these holes, just imagine a ping pong ball going through a basketball hoop.

Girls Still Get Pregnant!

Did you know that you can use a condom and still get pregnant? A variety of studies have found that condoms have an "annual failure rate" of 10% to 36% when it comes to preventing pregnancy.

Can you imagine the consequences for a couple when their condom fails? It happens all the time! One of the studies found that among teenagers, the condom failure rate regarding pregnancy was 36%! On average, that means that one out of every three teenage couples using condoms will become pregnant each year.

Are You ready to catch a sexually transmitted diseases?

Condoms provide considerably less protection against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than they do against pregnancy.

That's because a girl can get pregnant only at ovulation time (that's two to three days each month) but STDs can pass from partner to partner at any time of the month.

STDs are frequently passed through "skin to skin" contact even when condoms are used. This can happen because the bacterial or viral germs that cause many serious STDs (such as human papillomavirus, chlamydia, herpes, and syphilis) do not infect just one place on your body. They may infect anywhere in the male or female genital areas.

So, even if the virus or bacteria isn't passed through tears or holes in the condom itself, you can still get diseases because condoms don't cover or protect all areas of the genital region. That means condoms don't prevent many of the STD infections that take place during sexual contact.

(Editors note: STD is A.K.A. - VD or venereal disease. The first person to email me the root meaning/derivation of the word "venereal" wins a FREE copy of the video by Pam Stenzel called Sex Has A Price Tag. Send me your mailing address if you submit an answer so I can send you the video if you win.)

**Facts to Remember . . .

The United States' Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 56 million Americans have an incurable STD. That means 1 in 5 Americans are infected!

12 million people get a new STD each year!

33,000 people get a new STD every day and 22,000 of them are 15 to 24 years old!

25% of High School students will be infected with an STD before graduation!

[**Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Center for Disease Control, Atlanta]

Adapted from: Lickona, T. and J. Sex, Love, and You. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1994.

In 1993 the University of Texas analyzed the results of 11 different studies that had tracked the effectiveness of condoms to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus. The average condom failure rate in the 11 studies for preventing transmission of the AIDS virus was 31%.

One reason condoms fail in preventing the transfer of AIDS is that latex condoms have tiny intrinsic holes called "voids." Sperm is larger than the holes, but the AIDS virus is 50 times smaller than these tiny holes which makes it easy for the virus to pass through [Source: Dr. C. M. Roland, editor of Rubber Chemistry and Technology]. To give you an idea of how easy it would be for the virus to pass through these holes, just imagine a ping pong ball going through a basketball hoop.

Thanks for the info.

In a 10% failure rate environment, how often must one have sex before you are likely to die? 10 times? 100 times?

This is what everyone overlooks. No one uses a condom just once. Anyone who makes a condom part of his regular sex life is going to be using it scores of times, hundreds of times. A failure rate of 10% or even 1% may be acceptable when the undesired consequence is conception: human nature being what it is, most mothers tend to love their children no matter how inconvenient their arrival - and for the cold-hearted, stupid, or easily frightened, abortion is increasingly promoted as a way out. But when the down side is acquiring a lethal, wasting disease, the same odds become a lot less attractive. What's essential to remember is that the odds of failure increase over multiple uses. The same strategy that's 99% "safe" for a single occasion becomes only 90.4% reliable over 10 consecutive uses. For a carefree young man that's a month, or a week for a prostitute. Over 100 consecutive uses, "safety" drops to only 36.6%. (Remember, the condom only has to fail once for the users to become exposed.) And over 500 uses, the user has only a 0.7% expectation of being protected. And remember - these odds assume unrealistically ideal conditions. Studies indicate that most everyday users of condoms experience failure rates substantially higher than 1%.

What's clear is that over a period of just a few years, or even months, the condom strategy virtually guarantees the transmission of AIDS.

The twofold conclusion is obvious: first, far from attempting to impose a speculative theology, the Church's condemnation of condoms is a practical, hard-headed bid to save lives in the "real" world. Second, the Church's argument -- that only abstinence or marital continence can account for a drop in AIDS infection -- is spot on.