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I've received some off-blog critique regarding my posting the link to the interview in America with Michael Czerny, SJ. A more recent but similar response is in the news and this time the source is not a Catholic priest but the director of the Harvard University Aids Research Project, an institution not typically identified as a sympathizer for causes Catholic.
"We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.”-ConcordPastor
So notes Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population 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.”
(read the complete article at NRO)
2009popeonaids
I read the complete article on NRO, which is decribed as a multi-author conservative weblog. From there I googled Edward C. Green/Dr. Paul Farmer (whose judgment I trust completely.) Read an interesting dialogue on the subject between Green and Farmer. They seem to be in agreement on the effectiveness of the ABC approach (Abstinence, Be Faithful or Use Condoms.) In Senegal ABCD has been very effective. The D is drugs to treat STDs and particularly those found in sex workers. Senegal has a 1% HIV rate. It is a difficult and complicated subject, but one that seems not to be solved by a condoms/drug only approach. To succeed in reducing HIV/AIDS behavioral change must happen too.
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