The pontifical position on condom, based on ignorance, fallacy and a struggle of the Church to survive, as well as the response of the scientific community and activists are well known and documented (search this blog for some examples of both). But in a “Reflection” to be published in The lancet Samuel Ponce de Leon and colleagues add more weight to the argument that condoms are an essential tool in the fight against HIV in the future: evolution.

Now evolution is something the Church is also in denial about despite the facts that it can be seen even at the scale of a human life and that Darwinism is manifest with the selection of strains of HIV resistant to treatment. As Ponce de Leon wrote, “new treatments have been developed with little consideration of their evolutionary consequences, but HIV will not cease to evolve, as shown by the rapid resistance developed against the different combinations of drugs that are being used”.

It is under the pressure of selection exerted by HIV treatment that new strains of HIV virus resistant to the treatment are selected. Sooner or later, resistance will overcome treatment’s options and in the absence of a vaccine or of any other prevention methods that work (Abstinence only does not qualify), condoms can stop transmission from one individual to another but do not act as a selective agent.

“Pope Benedict XVI, together with physicians, policy makers, religious organisations, and, eventually, the population at large, should become fully aware of the obvious: by acting as a purely physical barrier, condoms not only have a key role in limiting the HIV pandemic, but also help to keep down the number of new strains. The Vatican must understand that, in purely Darwinian terms, HIV will never evolve resistance to condoms.”

The answer is in “more condoms”, not less.

Transversal thinking: with a bit more pressure, the Catholic Church could be selected against. In plain English, becomes extinct for its lack of fitness.

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