Pope: Condoms 'Increase' AIDS Epidemic in Africa

foxnews.com ^ | March 17, 2009 | staff

[kellynla]

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE —

Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday that the distribution of condoms is not the answer in the fight against AIDS in Africa.

Benedict has never before spoken explicitly on condom use although he has stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Some priests and nuns working with victims of the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa question the church's opposition to condoms.

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

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

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

Benedict's seven-day pilgrimage will take him to Cameroon and Angola.

Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic Church.

[cookcounty]

"Yet only in Africa is it a huge problem . Why?

This is a family show, I know, but many Africans go in for a lot of rough sex, by which I mean the act itself can get rough, including things like mixing sand into the equation to heighten male ecstasy. This results in frequent bleeding during sex for the female. That's why AIDS is much more heterosexual in Africa (Homosexuals tend to tear and bleed as well, since certain openings are not made to withstand vigorous penetration).

Sorry if this unsettles your stomach.

[Piquaboy]

Did not Aids start from monkeys? I seem to recall this from long ago.

[zerosix]

Some priests and nuns working with victims of the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa question the church's opposition to condoms.

Ah, but just look how many babies have been started, using a condom and most physicians will tell you that many STDs will NOT be prevent merely by using condoms.

It's obvious that the "some priests and nuns" are believing the liberal group think that condoms are the answer to any sexual related problem. They are NOT.

It's the behavior that must change not the method.

[kellynla]

don’t forget the needles...

[verity]

That is not the sub-Saharan Africa way.

[workerbee]

I forget which country it is — Nigeria? — that took the “keep it in your pants” approach and rebuffed UN attempts to condomize. IIRC, they are the only African nation that has seen a decrease in AIDS/HIV.

[newheart]

During the post-pill and pre-HIV period the condom because of its method failure rate of more than 5% and its user failure rate of 15% was despised as a method of family planning. Yet the singular focus of the anti- AIDS campaign over the last 10 years has been to eulogize the protective qualities of the condom as a shield against the pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STD). With no vaccine in sight and lacking the moral courage to embrace chastity, contemporary society, by marketing the condom as the solution to the HIV/AIDs pandemic, has put all its eggs in a condom basket. Yet the very experts who promote the condom as a strategic weapon against HIV/AIDs are silent in regard to its failure as a contraceptive. Nor do they highlight the care with which condoms must be 'stored and transported', HIV/AIDS epidemiology experts have established that not only is latex heat, cold, light and pressure sensitive but it is also adversely affected by humidity, ozone, air pollutants and deteriorates over time[1]. With this in mind, keeping a condom in a wallet, purse or car glove-box compartment would appear to violate the stringent storage requirements to maintain it in a good condition. In an experiment to test the effectiveness of condoms against HIV, researchers filled condoms with a liquid containing plastic molecules analogous to the AIDS virus: i.e., they were similar in shape and size. These plastic particles were placed inside a condom with a glass plunger inside the condom. This arrangement was designed to imitate many of the 'environmental' factors operative during intercourse. By testing condoms in an active in-vitro (test tube) system which simulated key physical conditions that influence viral particle leakage an accurate understanding could be obtained of the protective attributes of condoms during actual coitus. The test quantitatively addresses pressure, pH, temperature, surfactant properties(surface tension) and anatomical geometry. Leakage of HIV-sized particles through latex condoms was detectable for as many as 29 out of the 89 condoms tested. This result represents a failure rate of 30%.[2] Highly qualified researchers in the field of latex technology are now calling into question the merit of promoting condoms as a method of stopping the transmission of HIV-AIDS. For instance C.M.Rowland, Ph.D., editor of the journal Rubber Chemistry and Technology, wrote as long ago as 1992 to the Washington Post) stating:

"... Electron micrographs reveal voids (holes) 5 microns in size (50 times larger than the virus), while fracture mechanics analyses, sensitive to the largest flaws present, suggest inherent flaws as large as 50 microns (500 times the size of the virus".)

(http://www.faithandfamily.org.uk/publications/condoms_astep.htm)

[PhilCollins]

In about 1993, I heard that two or three American high schools had higher pregnancy rates a year after the schools started giving free condoms. Some kids who didn’t have sex, before the condoms were given, had sex, partly because the condoms were free. When they ran out of condoms, many of the kids had sex without condoms, causing many more girls to become pregnant. If the schools didn’t give the condoms, the kids wouldn’t have had sex, and they wouldn’t have conceived.

[Semper Mark]

“It's a false sense of security leading to risky behavior that causes disease.”

I read some years back that the AIDS virus is smaller than the microscopic holes in a condom.

The size comparison was something like 3 microns to 5 microns...but don't quote me on that.

“Safe sex” indeed.

[humantech]

Thats not the case. Just what the media portrays- Our church missions to China indicate that the chinese govt. Is allowing Christian Missionaries into the country in recovery ministriesSPECIFICALLY because they project that within 5 years, Chinas Aids problem will surpass Africa. And of course, they cant admint or show international weakness and lose face. Africa is just in the news a lot because you get all the best bands on a ticket for free if you mention its a fundraiser for africa

[ladyjane]

Lookit, AIDS exists all over the planet. Yet only in Africa is it a huge problem . Why?

I don't think the problem is too many condoms.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I made it to senior citizen stage without ever knowing this. How did I survive?

[MrB]

Information such as that is detrimental to the

“sex positive”

agenda of the left.

[ladyjane]

The countries who get the most condoms also get the most foreign aid. Has the pope considered that it’s the foreign aid causing the problem? Dirty money.

[FourPeas]

I read some years back that the AIDS virus is smaller than the microscopic holes in a condom.

I've read that, too. My guess is a source would be difficult to find. If it's true, it'd be less popular than proof that global warming isn't manmade.

[Antoninus]

He’s 100% correct. Condom usage just promotes the disordered idea that procreation can be divorced from the sexual act. It can’t. And when you try to do so, you end up with all the other societal ills that come with the contraceptive mentality—STDs, abortion, broken families, emotional and spiritual destruction, mental illness, etc.

[kellynla]

“AIDS first appeared in equatorial Africa, many scientists now believe. The earliest evidence of its presence on the African continent dates from a plasma sample drawn in 1959 in what was then Leopoldville, the Belgian Congo, and is now Kinshasa, Zaire. Dr. Mirko D. Grmek’s definitive book _History of AIDS_, published in 1990 by Princeton University Press, describes the primary African epidemic’s radiating outward from a region located in Zaire and Rawanda. There’s also a tantalizing connection with monkeys and other primates: Several African species carry a virus related to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS in human beings. Although HIV has yet to be found in monkeys, a “missing link” simian virus much closer to the human virus has been identified in two wild chimpanzees from Gabon. This has led to speculation that a chimp or a monkey with an AIDS virus identical to the human virus will eventually turn up.

Scientists have proposed a grab bag of ideas to explain how the disease may have leapt the vast chasm from monkey to man...”

THE ORIGIN OF AIDS
By Tom Curtis
Rolling Stone Magazine,
March 19th, 1992
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/curtis.htm

[cookcounty]

"I think maybe Mr. Pope should read the instructions on his condoms."

No, he understands better than you do the cultural fallout of condom distribution. You can tell kids to abstain and live a monogamous example or you can pass out condoms to them on the corner. Two very different messages with two very different cultural results.

One of these societies will have more sleeping around than the other. Which means they WILL have more AIDS, because, speaking from experience, sex without condoms is definitely more fun than with condoms. And bear in mind the "to-use-or-not-to-use decision" is usually made when people are, to be direct, half out of their minds.

Plus they break.

[Nathan Zachary]

Aren’t all Africans dead by now? I mean gezz, half the population has been dying from aids for 10 years running now, yet there is still 700 million of them running around starving, with aids...
There must have been 4 billion 10 years ago,that’s it... My bad.

[Nathan Zachary]

"On the contrary, it increases the problem."

???

Promotes sexual promiscuity.