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As, by the way, does the instinct that Africans are more likely to use gut condoms than latex, which seems to be based on some interesting ideas about the ease of removal of sheep intestines but little actual evidence. Would anyone like to support this idea with actual statistics?
No need to get sarky, Haus. I was looking for statistics myself, and am more than willing to be proved wrong.
Because it's obvious that Cardinal Trujillo's got his statistics wrong, if he's talking about latex condoms exclusively. The only reason I dragged gut condoms into the debate at all is that I was wondering how, short of actually lying outright, Cardinal Trujillo could make his claim about the ineffectiveness of condoms—could, in fact, blithely dismiss WHO findings with an airy "They are wrong about that... this is an easily recognisable fact." One wants to give the clergy the benefit of the doubt, y'know.
Spin, even brazen spin, is one thing: outright falsehood (or ignorance) is another entirely. And deliberate misinformation (assuming it is deliberate, and not the result of appalling ignorance or weird cultural factors) is yet another.
There are two points worth making, though:
(1) To address Ganesh's point that to suggest that 85% effectiveness equals ineffectiveness is a quite exceptional distortion. When one is disseminating a public health message as potentially influential as this one, one has a certain responsibility to the facts.
Quite true. And the sentiment finds an echo in this from Cardinal Trujillo: "These margins of uncertainty... should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger."
I agree with him up to the bit about the cigarettes. The important thing is to not get complacent, to give the full information about all risk factors, however small; to emphasize that there is no guaranteed "safe sex," only "safer sex." As stated upthread, there needs to be honest information out there to balance the notion of Contraceptive Infallibility (nice phrase, Lurid).
Pity the Church isn't providing that honest information in this case, but is rather resorting to hysterical scare tactics.
(2) You're don't think pope-hating comes into it? Look at toksik's speculations in this thread about the Vatican's motivations for this disinformation campaign:
there really is no reason i can think of to be that blindly devoted to dogma, unless you view people as an asset or a commodity with which to prop up your power base... more catholics will be born if no one uses condoms, and who is more devoted to religion than a born catholic with a terminal disease? ... i reckon the catholic church must be a very cynical and self centred organisation to dismiss the deaths of those who are not pure in their adherence to their particular interpretation of the lords message... [the Church thinks] AIDS is the way god has invented to keep the black people dying.
One man's opinion? Sure (and BTW, toksik, I hope you don't object to being quoted in such a manner). But in other posts, and in language less inflammatory, there is still an underlying assumption that the Vatican isn't interested in preventing the spread of AIDS and the miserable death of millions, that maintaining its aura of infallibility is more important to the Church than saving the lives of its constituents.
That's a pretty horrendous accusation to make. And when I brought up the alternative—that the WHO and the Catholic Church are pursuing the same end (i.e., stopping the spread of AIDS) by different means—the idea is dismissed out of hand.
Why? Because of ideological differences. The clash of abstinence vs. safer sex isn't really about practicality and logistics and "realistic expectations" (although safer sex advocates inevitably pitch it as such). At heart, it's an ideological dispute, pitting dirty hippie free-love promiscuity advocates against tight-assed blue-nosed old men who've "never [themselves] experienced sex (with or without a real live tiger)."
It's "We don't have to take our clothes off (oh yeah) to have a good time (mm-hm)" vs. "Sex is natural, sex is good / not everybody does it, but everybody should."
Both extremes are (IMHO) a shuck. Is 100% abstinence really any more of a far-out, unattainable goal than 100% proper and consistent condom use—every one, every time?
The ideal solution (again, this seems obvious to me) would be a syncretic program, advising self-control, restraint, and a sensible, moderate approach to sexual relations—which, whn undertaken, are undertaken with forethought and proper protection.
But this sort of program is exceedingly rare, because neither side will budge from their ideological position: the people preaching self-control balk at condoms, and the condom people close their ears when they hear the A-word: the feeling seems to be that medicine and morality should not mix.
I'm disgusted with both poles of the debate right now, frankly. |
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Frankly the Catholic church has a lot of rules and even while a vast number of its members might be terribly sad to see you die and might approve of sex, we're really talking about an order from the Church here.