Pope Criticized for anti-Condom position; Harvard professor says he is right.

By Ray

Look outside, quick! Is the world turned upside down? Harvard agreeing with the Pope?

In a Washington Post editorial reprinted March 20 on the Star Tribune's op-ed page, Pope Benedict XVI was criticized severely for being opposed to the distribution of condoms as the primary method or preventing Aids in Africa. The American Media all have greater faith than most believers that condoms are the answer. But Harvard disagrees.

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 noted that after 25 years, no visible positive results have been seen as a result of condom distribution

“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.”

Green added: “I also noticed that the pope said ‘monogamy’ was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than ‘abstinence.’ The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates (the other major factor is male circumcision).”