(from Times Online)
The Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the Aids epidemic – but were instead part of the problem.
Yeah, helpful.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Pope wants Africans to die of AIDS
Pope says condoms are not the solution to Aids - they make it worse by Richard Owen
(from Times Online)
Yeah, helpful.
(from Times Online)
Yeah, helpful.
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2 comments:
In fairness, there is the perfectly sensible argument that an attitude of "it's fine to shag around, we've got condoms" encourages sexual promiscuity, which in turn WILL increase the spread of STIs such as HIV.
Clearly as far as halting the spread of HIV goes, abstinence IS better than use of condoms, which is in turn better than nothing.
I personally feel that use of condoms is an acceptable middle-ground, as do most people. But the church is wanting to encourage total abstinence, well, no surprise there.
Still, I do feel that your anti-religious views are clearly affecting your reporting of some quite sound reasoning (even if their aims are unrealistic). And your title is worthy of the very worst form of tabloid rubbish, no offense.
The problem with the Pope's comments are that he has no statistical basis to make this statement, one way or the other. His logic is under-supported by the data --- the use of condoms in general reduces the amount of unsafe sex, and while it might encourage promiscuity, which in turn encourages some unsafe sex, statistically speaking, this third-order effect is less than the main effect of reducing the spread of AIDS.
Of course, this is all voodoo math which I am sure the head of the Roman Catholic church, the church that took four hundred years to officially recognize where the Sun and Earth stand with respect to each other, would have a really hard time understanding or even paying attention in the first place.
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