Oh, Pope Benedict. You are the spiritual leader for so many, why can’t you do better?
Since stepping off the papal plane Tuesday, attention to Benedict’s pilgrimage has been largely focused on the Vatican’s refusal to advocate condoms as a way to help stop the spread of AIDS, which is ravaging Africa in a pandemic that affects millions.
Benedict’s declaration on the plane that distributing condoms “increases” the AIDS problem has drawn international criticism from governments and organizations that fight the disease.
What an awful person. What an awful, on balance, organization.
You see, i don’t think that it’s the Pope job to advocate condoms. The guy is not in the public health business. His problem is that he is opposing condoms and standing in the way of the public health professionals from doing their jobs.
Seat belts increase traffic fatalities. Grounded wiring increases electricutions. Life vests increase drownings. Fire departments increase the number of homes lost to fire.
Is there any statement similar to the Pope’s that doesn’t sound entirely ridiculous?
Why does the Church hate life so much? They can ALWAYS be counted on to do whatever they can to ensure as much injury to living people under the lie of protecting some absent “life”.
Okay, can some Catholic tell me where in the Bible it says the Pope is infallible?
I know “why can’t you do better” is a rhetorical question, but the answer is: because he’s an arch-reactionary who was elected Pope precisely to stop any tendencies that could be considered the slightest bit progressive.
Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, in response to papal press comments en route to Africa this week.
“The pope is correct,” Green told National Review Online Wednesday, “or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope’s comments. He stresses that “condoms have been proven to not be effective at the ‘level of population.’”
“There is,” Green adds, “a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”
Doesn’t really sound so nutty when you look past your own bias and look at the science.
This Green guy seems to be National Review’s goto guy for condom scaremongering.
Doesn’t really sound so nutty when you look past your own bias and look at the science.
That wouldn’t happen to be anything like Creation Science, would it?
Eutychus: Doesn’t really sound so nutty when you look past your own bias and look at the science.
Yeah, the Pope should really try doing that sometime.
This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”
“May be due in part”?
If that’s science, then he must have data. If he doesn’t have data, it’s not science, it’s a guess.
when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”
Does wearing a helmet cause cyclists to take greater chances?
Isn’t against the law to deface money?
Why does the Church hate life so much?
They only see it as prologue.
Benedict’s declaration on the plane that distributing condoms “increases” the AIDS problem
UR DOIN IT WRONG!
I’m not sure anyone here really cares about anything more than bashing the Pope/Catholics but on the off chance that some do care about life and the truth behind this…
Dr. Norman Hearst, Professor of Family Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco explored this issue at a 2007 hearing at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Dr. Hearst summarized the results of a recent study on the relationship between condom use and public health outcomes in both high risk groups and in people caught up in a “generalized epidemic”– as in much of Africa. Here is what he said:
…”We then looked for evidence of a public health impact for condoms in generalized epidemics. To our surprise, we couldn
To our surprise, we couldn
“We then looked for evidence of a public health impact for condoms in generalized epidemics. To our surprise, we couldn