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 …

Since the papal comment about condoms and the HIV epidemic, there has been a flurry of articles written in support of the pontifical nonsense. These often call upon a comparison between “sinful” Thailand, awash with HIV and condoms, and the “holly” Philippines where there is not such thing as HIV or condoms (a bit like in Iran).
Does this sound slightly over the top? Not really. Kathleen Gilbert writing for the LifesSiteNews website quotes Yolly Eileen Gamutam, head of the Asia’s Catholic Association of Doctors, Nurses and Health Professionals (ACIM-Asia) saying …

The head of the Catholic Church in Australia has open his mouth to add primate bunk to previous pontifical nonsense.
Unsurprisingly, the Cardinal Pell from down under endorsed the papal comment made in Africa that condoms “can even increase the problem” of HIV, adding that, “The idea that you can solve a great spiritual and health crisis like AIDS with a few mechanical contraptions like condoms is ridiculous”.
HIV and AIDS have been jumbled with quite a lot of nonsense but to relate it with a great spiritual crisis is a …

From Entebbe, Uganda - The New Vision, a Uganda daily, reprinted today an article by Irish Times writer John Waters lambasting the Western media for pumping out its partisan propaganda about HIV prevention through the distribution of condoms.

The western media has been pumping out its partisan propaganda about prevention of AIDS
through the distribution of condoms (original caption)
Beyond taking the defence of the Pontiff’s unfounded claim that condoms aggravated the problem of HIV, Waters’s proposition is that “once you advocate condom use, you are accepting that abstinence is no longer a persuasive option”. Deliberate …

Africa and in particular sub-Saharan Africa is the continent the most affected by the HIV epidemic. During the last 25 years more than 20 millions people have died of AIDS in Africa. There, the epidemic particularly affects women, HIV transmission is mostly through heterosexual sex, and concurrent relationships have been identified as a force driving the spread of the virus in the population. In Africa, HIV is mostly about sex. Prevention interventions have been difficult, hindered by limited political commitment, if not political denial of the cause of AIDS, religious …