Friday, April 17, 2009

Condoms haven’t stopped AIDS epidemics:

Third World countries that have made condom use their primary AIDS prevention strategy, HIV infection rates have continued to rise or, at best, have not dropped significantly. In 2004, the journal Studies in Family Planning concluded, “No clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalized epidemic primarily by means of condom promotion.” Yet the United Nations, the European Union and its member countries, some U.S. agencies, and international organizations continue to promote condom use as the primary method of combating the spread of HIV and other STDs. Not only do condoms fail regularly even when used consistently and properly, people do not like them. According to the March 2004 “Bulletin of the World Health Organization,” 44% of married couples who start using condoms for birth control stop using them within a year. Despite this, and despite its own admission that the failure rate of condoms for pregnancyprevention is 50% higher than that of the Pill, the bulletin recommended that birth control promoters attempt to convince married couples to switch to condoms from the Pill. The bulletin did not cite the many health problems caused by the Pill, including increased risk of STDs, as reasons for switching, but HIV prevention.

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