Condom Kingdom Deflated by Failure (Are You Listening, Bill?)

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was welcomed to the Indian city of Hyderabad last week by a giant air-filled condom. The 8-foot monstrosity brought a smile to the face of the world’s richest man, who was there to announce a $100 million AIDS program to be financed by his foundation.(1)

Hyderabad, of course, is the site of Microsoft’s first software development center outside the United States. Gates’s glee may have been prompted by the thought of all the goodwill that his generosity would buy among the Indian people. By blanketing the country with condoms, he would single-handedly stop the spread of HIV.

Perhaps Gates is unaware of what a failure condom-pushing programs have been in the past:

· The Center for Disease Control has reluctantly, but accurately, questioned the effectiveness of condoms in protecting against sexually transmitted diseases, noting that the failure rate for condoms can be as high as 15%.(2)

· The highly-regarded international peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, in 2000 published an article in which the authors argued that the massive distribution of condoms in conjunction with a “safe sex” message may actually help spread the HIV virus.(3)

· The pro-abortion Allan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) notes a condom failure rate as high as 17.6%.(4)

· The condom failure rate in the West is so high that over 65% of approximately 3,000 condom users surveyed discontinued use after 24 months.(5)

· A new UN report suggests that monogamy, not condoms, is the answer to the AIDS epidemic.(6)

· Even Gates’s own foundation has effectively dissed condoms. On the limited utility of AIDS prevention methods among African women, the Gates Foundation states that “if it diminishes sexual pleasure, it is unlikely to be used reliably.”(7)

Condoms have other drawbacks as well. They can lead to increased rates of abortion as a back-up method of so-called family planning. They can cause cervical cancer.(8)

And, as was recently documented in Tanzania,
substandard condoms—which can contribute directly to the spread of disease—are a problem.(9)

Quoted from email from PRI http://www.pop.org