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

They only see it as prologue.

Benedict’s declaration on the plane that distributing condoms “increases” the AIDS problem

UR DOIN IT WRONG!

Does wearing a helmet cause cyclists to take greater chances?

“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.

Yeah, the Pope should really try doing that sometime.

That wouldn’t happen to be anything like Creation Science, would it?

“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.

Is there any statement similar to the Pope’s that doesn’t sound entirely ridiculous?