Frontdesk

By David Waggoner

Condoms. Such a lifesaver in the twenty-first century. And yet one particular nongovernmental organization?perhaps the most powerful, quasi-nation state in history?has declared condoms and the practice of using them an act of lowering the bar on sexual health safety in a world threatened by AIDS. Even the European Commission, according to Agence France-Presse, has criticized the Vatican for ?suggesting that condoms do not protect users against HIV, saying the assertion had no scientific basis and could worsen the global AIDS pandemic.? A likely outcome, especially in Africa, which no longer has enough graveyards to bury its dead.

Often, American Catholics have voiced their concern when church leaders do not adequately respond to the realities they are facing in their everyday lives. Witness the many Catholics who protested the Church?s handling of its sex-abuse problem. So it?s surprising to imagine that the Catholic Church?s American wing has not yet attacked the Vatican?s medieval position on safer sex. I?d like to know how many American Catholics actively use a latex form of prophylactic and therefore can testify that the condom naysayers are wrong. For close to twenty years now, many sexually active people have stayed negative for a reason. Part of this reason is the proper use of condoms.

Yet the Church is asking its one billion adherents worldwide to choose faith over science. According to the French news service article, European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin goes on record as saying: ??I rely on statements that are based on sound scientific evidence?and we can demonstrate that condoms are the best way to prevent HIV infection.?? If used correctly, condoms are barriers against many sexually transmitted disease-causing agents, including HIV.

All of this firestorm came about when Columbian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo countered that condoms were unsafe, ?because the virus could sneak through pores in the rubber sheath.? Trujillo told AFP: ?In the case of the AIDS virus, which is around 450 times smaller than the sperm cell, the condom?s latex material obviously gives much less security. Some studies reveal permeability of condoms in 15 percent or even up to 20 percent of cases.?

Nonsense, say hundreds of European Catholic scientists who advise the European Union: ?Over the last 15 years, the Commission has supported about a dozen research initiatives in this field across Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa, the areas most affected by the AIDS pandemic.? The studies are conclusive: HIV is stopped dead in its tracks by properly using condoms during sexual intercourse.

I guess Trojan condoms will have a new ad campaign on their hands: the Trojan Horse condoms, where crafty spermatozoan and HIV can spill out once inside the vagina or rectum of the receptive partner. If only myths were easily laid to rest. But being a powerful institution, the Catholic Church is ignoring one reality: AIDS kills, but condoms don?t.

Cardinal Trujillo, who is president of the Vatican?s Council for the Family, proposes the following: ?Ministries of health [should] require the inclusion in condom packages and advertisements, and in the apparatus or shelves where they are displayed, a warning that the condom is not safe.? Not safe for whom? For those men and women who don?t use them; who ignore the fact that HIV is the greatest health crisis known to man, and that AIDS is not going away on any continent anytime soon.

It?s reckless endangerment when any government, sacred institution, or national leader (South Africa?s President Thabo Mbeki comes to mind) proposes anything that isn?t grounded in science, prevention, or common sense. To do otherwise will only endanger unneccesarily millions more young men and women who are just coming into their sexual maturity.

Nothing is guaranteed 100 percent effective. But what is almost certain to be a failure is the Vatican?s paranoia campaign.