Dear Carla Bruni,
In this article you attack the Pope. Please read the below article by Edward Green, ignorance is not bliss and the Catholic Church is right…
By Edward C. Green
Sunday, March 29, 2009; A15http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825_pf.html
When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn’t helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: “Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms.”
Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him.
We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and — along with contraception — female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes. My comments are only about the question of condoms working to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa’s generalized epidemics — nowhere else.
In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations’ AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called “Reassessing HIV Prevention” 10 AIDS experts concluded that “consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them). In theory, condom promotions ought to work everywhere. And intuitively, some condom use ought to be better than no use. But that’s not what the research in Africa shows.
Why not?
One reason is “risk compensation.” That is, when people think they’re made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.
Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it’s possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it’s those ongoing relationships that drive Africa’s worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world’s highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.
These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.
So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up these multiple and concurrent sexual networks — or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. “Closed” or faithful polygamy can work as well.
In Uganda’s early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on “Sticking to One Partner” or “Zero Grazing” (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and “Loving Faithfully.” These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.
Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 “consensus statement” published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity. Moreover, liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.
Surely it’s time to start providing more evidence-based AIDS prevention in Africa.
The writer is a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Stan Lee has lost it. Creating a “super” hero that suffers from same sex attraction is a bad idea. There is nothing healthy toward the individual or society from the homosexual lifestyle. The real world, people suffering from same sex attraction have serious issues, showing that nothing is wrong with it damages people and society.
http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/article2128530.ece
“Family and Marriage Therapy”
Does anyone else see the irony in this? This girl is completely clueless and has no business in family and marriage therapy if she’s going to throw away her virginity to pay for school. Natalie, ever hear of a loan? Anyone who would seek out her advice for family or marriage therapy would be a complete idiot. She should be black listed from doing any type of counseling for life. She has a seriously disordered sense of morality and conscience to think there is nothing wrong with this.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
- Martin Luther King Jr., a great Right Wing Republican
http://usinfo.state.gov/in
Character.
How is it that so many who talk about him on the news are glad there is a “black president” judging character? Color doesn’t matter. To be glad for a “black president” says that race matters.
I share in Martin Luther King Jr’s dream and I think it one day will come, but it’s not today. Character has been completely overlooked.
Obama is a liar… a man of good character does not lie.
Obama supports infanticide via medical neglect… a man of good character does not allow innocent helpless babies to die.
Marxist/Socialist are not good character traits… a man of good character believes in hard work
True to life cliches: “You will be known by the company you keep” and “Birds of a feather flock together”… Obama has not keep good company (Frank Marshall Davis, Wright, Ayers, Resco, Farrakhan, ACORN, Pelosi, Dodd, etc…).
As long as those on the left keep making “race” an issue, it will be. If “race matters”, then it’s racism. Things that we have no control over should not be how we are judged - for better, or for worse.
As for those of us on the right, we know that race is not an issue and hasn’t ever been an issue. To make race an issue is anti-right. To be on the right is to be for lawful justice… to do the right thing. To use race as an issue for or against in voting is unjust, therefore not the right thing to do.
Right:
1. in accordance with what is good, proper, or just: right conduct.
2. in conformity with fact, reason, truth, or some standard or principle; correct: the right solution; the right answer.
3. correct in judgment, opinion, or action.
4. adherence or obedience to moral and legal principles and authority.
5. that which is morally, legally, or ethically proper: to know right from wrong.
6. that which is in accord with fact, reason, propriety, the correct way of thinking, etc.
A few years ago I went to a social justice conference and was horrified at the number of women and children that are kept as slaves in America. Tonight, MSNBC has aired a few shows on the topic… human trafficking has become worse. What is wrong with our society that we have not reduced this horror?! Human trafficking should be a capital crime. One example of how bad it has become is that in Escambia County Florida, a poor 16 year old girl was brutally gang rapped, held captive, and sold… the family happened to see her car with some scumbag driving in and the poor girl drugged in the backseat, her brother was able to save her by holding a knife to his throat…. yet NO ONE has been arrested!
We can blame all of the latest economic issues on Bill Clinton and the Democrats in Congress over the last thirty years. The democrooks have forced banks to make subprime mortgages to people who should have never been able to buy a home. This drove up the prices of homes, then when people started defaulting on the loans it caused the housing bubble to crash.
Only the ignorant and the idiot would vote for Barrak Hussein Obama this election. He is the friend of terrorists (not just Ayers, but Farrakhan, “Rev” ‘Hate Monger’ Wright, Rashid Khalidi, etc…).
You democrats out there should be mad… be very mad. Look at the clown your party and people put in place.