I went out with an HIV positive guy for 2 years (over 15 years ago) and we had sex using condoms. If they don't work, why don't I have HIV? HIV started by being spread by dirty needles and and breast milk you guys.
Condoms (DUH) don't stop the spread but it sure helps it. Anyone who says different is a monkey. The Pope's comments were taken out of context. He said the answer to the AIDS problem was not the use of condom but promoting abstinence.
A man at Harvard wrote an article about how there is no discernible link between condom use and lowed incidents of HIV/AIDS. the real solution against hiv/aids is not rubbers and the real problem is not hiv/aids.
What is really causing AIDs, it is sexaul immorality! We need to treat the source of the problem in order to cure it. Condoms don't do anything except cover up the problem and increase it.
We need to teach people about sexual ethics in marriage. The true meaning of sex is an image and particpation in God's love!
condoms are contraceptives, when they don't work they increase abortions, out of wedlock children, fatherless kids, increase violent crime rate, etc. I volunteered at an AIDS testing center back in the mid 1990s.
Condoms DONT completely protect against AIDS. Condoms that are made of latex do the best job rather than lambskin or other materials.
It used to be thought that adding a spermicide containing nonoxynol-9 gave added protection but in the years since then studies have shown that the lining of the vaginal/rectal walls can be abrased by nonoxynol-9, thus giving an opening to the HIV virus rather than preventing it.
Condoms can also break. Many of the HIV-Positive people I processed into the testing center were advised to double up their condoms and even then this wasn't considered foolproof.
Condoms DO reduce the risk by quite a lot, but they do not prevent it completely.
You got lucky.
EDIT: HIV/AIDS did NOT start by dirty needles and breastmilk. It started in Africa among heterosexual males, thought to have been transferred to them from a vector in the African jungle by bite, perhaps monkeys or mosquitos, although the exact cause has never been found.
The first man who actually brought it to the rest of the world was a gay French man who was an airline steward. He was known as "Patient 0 ". At that time it was common for gay men to have many multiple partners, usually anonymous, and Patient 0 spread the virus to literally dozens and dozens of gay men around the world. From there it spread most fiercely among the gay male population, and from there it spread out to the dirty needle users (some gay men used a lot of drugs at that time), and the dirty needle users were both gay and heterosexual.
From there it spread in the heterosexual white and black community, and for some years the population that was increasing the most with AIDS was heterosexual black women - because so many of their men were needle users AND there has always been a population of closet gays in the black community (as in other communities as well).
However, you should also know that in Africa it has remained a heterosexual disease, mainly brought home to wives by husbands who work away from home for long periods of time in mines and forests, and they visit prostitutes on a regular basis. The population of prostitutes in Africa with AIDS is almost 100%.
At this point there are literally thousands of villages in Africa in which there are almost nothing left but dozens and dozens of orphaned children, both parents having been killed by AIDS. Dirty needles and breast milk was only secondary. Homosexuality was the first cause, then bisexuals spread it to the straight community (as well as drug use, and we know that the homosexual community is also rampant with drug use).
Latex condoms contain microscopic "voids" that are 50x larger than an HIV virus, allowing the virus to pass through. Condoms also break. Abstinence is best. We are talking about populations of millions of people and not one or two lucky couples.
The experts say:
Last year, Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, wrote: "In every African country in which HIV infections declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex partner over the course of a year鈥攚hich is exactly what fidelity programs promote."
And: "Many countries that have not seen declines in HIV have seen increases in condom use, but in every country worldwide in which HIV has declined there have been increases in levels of faithfulness and usually abstinence as well." http://www.harvardaidsprp.org/index.html
Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee wrote: The proportion of Ugandans infected with HIV plunged from 21 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2002. Telling men and women to keep sex sacred -- to save sex for marriage and then remain faithful -- is telling them to love one another deeply with their whole hearts. Most HIV infections in Africa are spread by sex outside of marriage: casual sex and infidelity. The solution is faithful love. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
See also:
+ The Washinton Post, "The Pope May be Right", March 29, 2009: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
+ Science, "Reassessing HIV Prevention", May 9, 2008: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/su...
The Catholic Church has never asked unmarried people to have unprotected sex. Neither has she asked married couples with diseases to have unprotected sex.
Judeo-Christian tradition has taught for thousands of years:
1. Single people should be celibate.
2. Married people should be faithful to each other (adultery is wrong).
3. Married couples should welcome God's gift of children and, therefore, artificial birth control is against the will of God.
If the world is going to ignore teachings about chastity (1 & 2), then why is the world so upset about teaching artificial birth control (3)?
People who are already ignoring the more important teachings about chastity (1 and 2) should have no problem ignoring the less important teaching of artificial birth control (3).
Even if a person infected with AIDS was to use a condom to help protect his or her spouse, condoms are not 100% effective (read the box) and the spouse may be infected and die anyway. A person who truly loves their spouse would not endanger them in this way.
In regards to sex outside of marriage, the Church makes it a practice not to tell people how to sin. With or without a condom:
鈥?Fornication is still fornication
鈥?Adultery is still adultery
鈥?Rape is still rape
With love in Christ. I would echo that you are taking the pope's words out of context.
If you read what he said in that speech, and what he has consistently said, you can see that he was saying that condoms don't work as a solution to the HIV/AIDS problem. And the scientific facts back him up. In African countries with aggressive condom programs, rates of infection have not gone down, but have gone up. The only African countries that have seen the rates of infection go down have had a focus on the same message that the pope has consistently given: monogamy and fidelity. Every country that has put the focus on condoms has seen the rates continue to go up. The Harvard study above is just one example for this.
A big problem here is what is known as risk adjusting. It is a well-known phenomenon. People have a risk threshold. If you decrease the through something like a condom, they will increase the risk of their behavior in otherwise until the overall risk is about the same .. or at times higher if they overestimate the initial risk reduction.
And blaming the Catholic position on condoms for infections makes absolutely no sense. It is nonsensical to believe that people who flout Catholic teaching about sex and marriage are going to be bound by Catholic teaching about condoms. It's not the Catholic prohibition against contraception that is keeping people from using condoms. Condoms clearly work. There are some African regions that have seen aids drop dramatically thanks to aggressive condom distribution and education.
I'm sure the pope has racked up quit a body count with his nonsense, if I was a Catholic I'd be really mad and certainly reevaluate my affiliation with that church. You took an incredible risk with your health and your life. It's difficult to try to understand why someone would take such a risk. Condoms can and often do break, and you could easily have ended up with HIV. You're just lucky that you didn't. However effective condoms may be, abstinence is much more effective, and that's a biological fact rather than anything to do with religion or morality. On a global scale, promoting abstinence will result in fewer cases of HIV than promoting condom use. I'm not Catholic or religious at all but I agree with him. Hey there,
I'm not Catholic, but my partner is a biological scientist. He says the Pope is right about condoms not stopping HIV. They do reduce risk, they don't prevent the spread. I think you've been lucky is all.
Interestingly, most people focus on the Pope's views on condoms, but in the wider scheme, if everyone adopted Biblical values on sex (monogamy for life - gay or straight) then we'd eliminate STD's in one or two generations. I think that's the real point.
:-) Condoms are "highly effective" in preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
Edit:
Actually, abstinence does work. The hard part is getting people to abstain.
. Fireball is showing her ignorance and bigotry
The pope is an evil bigoted lying ex-nazi who is wrong again - unsurprisingly
edit: Queen Kira is a bigot
Cindy's addition is right They work...
They just don't work for ME.
(I'm "Old-School": Bareback Rider.) I think, IIRC, they reduce the risk, but they don't totally eliminate it. Read a condom box....they will state that they are not 100% preventative of VD. The ONLY 100% prevention of VD is ABSTINENCE.....which is what the pope said. The Pope is behind the times. sigh they work 85 percent of the time. dont brag about sinning. You lucked out but it wasnt smart maybe you are a good friend of magic johnson? =\ It's a burden of proof thing. The pope can say what he wants. it won't make it true without supporting evidence. Well, I agree with one other user who said about you twisting the Pope's words. I'm not Catholic so this is not me bashing you. The Pope realizes that condoms are effective in preventing infection but since he has to promote abstinence he has to say that this are not the ONLY solution. Sure, everyone would be 100% safe if they did not have sex but that is not realistic whic is why condoms exist.
Also, you're wrong about how HIV began to be spread but that's another story.
Either way, it doesn't matter what the Pope says. Who listens to him? No one in my Catholic family does, they all think he is insane. I was born in Peru which is 90% Catholic and pharmacies sell condoms out in the open. No one cares and there are HIV/AIDS prevention awareness programs. Frankly, the Catholic Church may have the biggest number of adherents of Christianity but hardly any Catholic listens to what the pope says.
I'm not saying you were wrong in dating that guy. You were careful and that is what pro-abstinence people don't understand. No one is going to reject sex for fear but they would take steps to prevent any misfortune to the best of their abilities. | 