How many
condoms would it take to end the AIDS crisis?
In 1998,
Sharon Stone urged parents worldwide to set out a basket of condoms
for their children…as many as 200…encourage your children to play
with them, take them, give them to their friends…condoms and more
condoms for our children, she pleaded, because we love them.
You can’t
really blame Ms. Stone. After all, condoms had been the centerpiece
of our response to AIDS since news stories in 1982 first announced
the arrival of HIV in America.
Immediately,
the deadly virus sent us into a panic. School children wanted to
know if they could get HIV from mosquitoes. Mothers wanted to know
if public pools were safe for their children. Grown men quit going
to the gym and bought weight machines for the garage.
Worst of all,
liberated sex, once a promise of unrestrained pleasure born on the
wings of the birth control pill and coed college dorms, became a
risky adventure. Scientists scrambled in their labs to put
definition to the virus while health officials struggled to suggest
ways to avoid contracting it.
Americans
needed answers in a crisis where precious few answers were
available. And so we grasped at the closest thing we could find…the
condom.
We could have
ended coed dorms on college campuses. Instead we enlightened
students with the ten-step method of putting on a condom.
The Centers
for Disease Control could have closed the gay bath houses so
prominent in San Francisco
and New
York.
Instead, the CDC preached condoms.
We could have
come together as a society to reject sexual promiscuity. Instead we
set out baskets of condoms in high school guidance offices.
A wake-up call
arrived this week. The New York Times reports, “A rare
strain of HIV that is highly resistant to virtually all
anti-retroviral drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS
was detected in a New York City man last week.” Health officials
are said to be alarmed. But they shouldn’t be surprised.
Four years
earlier, The Arizona Republic reported, “People who catch HIV
are increasingly likely to encounter mutant forms of the virus that
are able to resist some of the drugs commonly used to treat the
infection. Drug-resistant strains have been a major problem since
the start of treatment in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.”
Drug resistant
strains of virus have long been known to scientists. The CDC could
have predicted this would happen. Instead, they plowed ahead, with
the help of science superstars like Sharon Stone, to put a basket of
condoms in every home.
America
didn’t stop with handing out condoms to our own kids. From 1989 to
2000, over 232,000,000 condoms were sent annually to eleven African
nations. While that’s not even close to all the condoms in the
world, that’s a heck of a lot of condoms.
In Zambabwe,
their allowance provided the highest number of condoms per male for
this group of nations. Zimbabwe also had the highest HIV prevalence
rate. More condoms…and more AIDS.
It takes a
courageous leader to set aside the popular mantra and evaluate the
AIDS epidemic with a clear mind. Ugandan President and Mrs.
Museveni are just such leaders. They were able to look past the
mountains of condoms and see the obvious. Lack of condoms doesn’t
cause AIDS. Sex with infected people causes AIDS.
Uganda
chose a different path. One of its governmental booklets published
in 1989 stated with assurance, “The government does not recommend
using condoms as a way to fight AIDS.” Condoms gave users “a false
impression that they were safe from AIDS.”
Choosing to
support a return to their traditional cultural values, Ugandans
educated and supported one another in saving sex for marriage and in
honoring their marriage with fidelity. Because they believed it
could be done, they did it. And today, experts from the world are
traveling to Uganda to study their great sexual
experiment…self-control.
Meanwhile, in
the
United States,
as we contemplate how to face this latest AIDS scare, the old condom
battle heats up once again. This time, however, “a radical idea,
born of desperation,” is taking hold in some quarters. AIDS workers
dismayed over a new battle against a stronger virus are considering
a novel idea…novel that is, for Americans. They are calling for an
end to promiscuous sex.
How many
condoms will it take to end the AIDS epidemic? Zero.
Yes, that’s
right. Zero.
Confronting
people with their personal responsibility for curbing sexual
behavior is beginning to sound more reasonable all the time. Even
the CDC has turned the corner on its website, “The surest way to
avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain
from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous
relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is
uninfected.”
And what do
you know…that doesn’t take a single condom. Not one.
