Date: 2003-11-21

Why BBC Was Wrong About AIDS Prevention

SPUC Director Says Science Backs Up Church's Emphasis on Chastity

LONDON, NOV. 21, 2003 (Zenit.org).- A recent television program on AIDS prevention failed to note that scientific evidence indicates the Catholic Church is right when it advocates abstinence and marital fidelity, says a pro-life observer.

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said as much in an open letter to the director general of BBC in response to the network's program "Sex and the Holy City."

The program, which was screened to coincide with the recent 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II, claimed to investigate the Church's teachings on sexuality.

Smeaton shared with ZENIT the scientific and empirical evidence that contradicts the BBC's statements, which he thinks implied that the Pope's personal views on contraception and abortion are causing misery and death in the developing world.

Q: What inspired you to write this open letter to the BBC?

Smeaton: The BBC continues to command a great deal of influence and respect around the world, but it remains accountable to virtually no one. When it makes unsubstantiated and misleading allegations of this nature, the results are very damaging for all those who work to protect human life.

SPUC is not a religious organization, but the Panorama program attacked the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion and human sexuality that we share. We felt duty-bound as a Society to expose its one-sided and inaccurate coverage of this subject.

Q: What were your main points of contention with the BBC program?

Smeaton: From beginning to end, the program presupposed that the Church's prohibition of abortion and birth control was the major cause of poverty and suffering in the developing world. This view was never once challenged in the course of the program.

In the part of the program that dealt with Nicaragua, cheap pro-abortion tactics were used unashamedly, such as the use of unreferenced figures for maternal death through illegal abortion and the portrayal of pregnant child rape-victims as the norm.

In the section on Manila, outdated Malthusian arguments were used to present contraception as the magical answer to poverty and homelessness. In the part about Kenya, the program went so far as to suggest that the Church was condemning people to death from AIDS by "peddling rumor and superstition."

We are not saying that the issues do not warrant scrutiny. Our major complaint is that the BBC made no attempt at presenting a balanced, honest and accurate report.

Q: What are the problems with using condoms as the primary solution to stopping AIDS?

Smeaton: The major problem is that they are not safe. This is not even a contentious point. The condom manufacturers themselves point this out. The issue of viral leakage is certainly open to dispute but, even simply taking into account the danger of a condom's rupturing or slipping off, the risk of HIV transmission is very real.

Condom use may reduce the risk of transmission, but to spread the message that condom use prevents AIDS is a dangerous lie. It is no good saying that the risk is "only 15%," or "only 1 in 10" when we are talking about human lives.

We have to ask ourselves whether the decision-makers and birth control advocates would be quite so cavalier if we were talking about a terminal condition that was transmitted non-sexually. For example, would health care professionals advise a chain smoker at serious risk of lung cancer to smoke cigarettes with better filters rather than giving up smoking altogether?

Worse, would they advise him to give his wife and children masks to reduce the amount of smoke they breathed in so that he could smoke freely around the house rather than telling him to act responsibly and not expose them to any risk at all?

The second major problem is that condoms encourage irresponsible behavior because people believe themselves to be better protected than they actually are. A paper entitled "Condoms and Seat Belts: The Parallels and the Lessons," which was published in a UK medical journal called The Lancet, noted that "a vigorous condom promotion policy could increase rather than decrease unprotected sexual exposure if it has the unintended effect of encouraging a greater overall level of sexual activity."

The figures bear this out. Botswana has the highest distribution of condoms, but 39% of the population is infected with AIDS. However, when the archbishop of Nairobi made the same point in a reputable medical journal, he was accused of talking "scientific nonsense."

Q: Are there independent scientific studies that back up objections to condoms?

Smeaton: Yes there are. First, to reaffirm my previous point, there is not a single scientific study I have come across that promotes condoms as 100% effective.

All reputable studies admit a failure rate caused by a variety of factors. Besides the ones already mentioned, latex is a natural substance that can degrade if stored in unsuitable conditions, if exposed to extremes of temperature or if stored for an extended length of time.

Condoms are also used incorrectly in many cases. Studies often refer to "ideal" or "consistent and proper" use compared with "typical" use, where the failure rate and associated risks are higher.

To give a couple of examples, the U.S. National Institute of Health study on condoms that was cited in the Panorama program gives a failure rate of between 1.6% and 3.6%. It also quotes an estimate from National Surveys of Family Growth that suggested that 14% of couples experienced an unintended pregnancy during the first year of "typical" condom use.

With any failure rate connected with pregnancy, one has to bear in mind that a woman can only become pregnant for between five and seven days of her cycle whereas a person can be infected with HIV at any time. Also, while a conception involves the creation of a new life regardless of how the couple considers the child, HIV infection can only ever be a tragedy.

Q: Could you explain why programs based on promoting abstinence and marital fidelity may be preferable to massive distributions of condoms?

Smeaton: Programs based on abstinence and marital fidelity are always preferable to condom distribution in the fight against AIDS -- and it is not just the Church that tells us this. The World Health Organization and the condom companies say so, too.

Now, condom companies are not exactly supporters of the "theology of the body," nor are they guardians of Christian marriage. However, even the makers of Durex condoms say quite clearly that "for complete protection from HIV and other [sexually transmitted infections], the only totally effective measure is sexual abstinence or limiting sexual intercourse to mutually faithful, uninfected partners."

The logic of abstinence and marital fidelity programs is beautifully simple and straightforward. If a person sleeps around and uses a condom, they run the risk, however reduced, of contracting HIV; yet no one has ever died as a direct result of virginity.

It is the same if a man and a woman are faithful to one another in marriage, having abstained beforehand. The Church's teaching on human sexuality is not the idealistic dream that the Panorama program claimed. It is the common-sense system by which billions of people have lived over generations.

Q: What is the success rate of AIDS prevention or reduction in areas that have abstinence and marital fidelity programs compared with areas where condoms are distributed?

Smeaton: Uganda is perhaps the biggest success story in the fight against AIDS and much of its achievement is because of changes in sexual behavior, particularly emphasis on abstinence and fidelity.

Condoms have been promoted as a last resort, but a report by USAID on Uganda found that condoms were not a major factor in the decrease in HIV transmission. In fact, the decline in transmission rates began before the widespread promotion of condoms.

Critics of abstinence claim that people are not strong enough to resist, but this is unsubstantiated propaganda. In one district of Uganda, it was noted that fewer than 5% of 13- to 16-year-olds were sexually active in 2001 compared with 60% in 1994, a significant change in sexual behavior achieved in just seven years.

Unlike some of its neighboring countries, Uganda has had a decline in HIV transmission for well over a decade and 98% of people with no education are aware of AIDS -- one of the highest awareness rates in the world.

Q: What are the best ways of changing public attitudes and the conventional wisdom about using condoms to fight AIDS?

Smeaton: We need to circulate honest, accurate information. The facts speak for themselves. Governments and aid agencies need to put aside their anti-family agendas and put their energies into programs that actually make a difference.

The public needs to be made aware that abstinence and monogamy are positive and beneficial choices for individuals and for society. No one should be condemned to die because of Western resistance to responsible sexual behavior based on a model of marital fidelity.

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), November 22, 2003

Answers

-- (top@top.top), November 22, 2003.

Brittain, and the western world in General, is progressively Libertine. In their vewi, Sexiual exploration is healthy, and thus shoudl be encouraged. Their back up is tjat no one is strong enough to abstain, even though peopel use to all the time. ( within living memory of some people, Sex outside of marriafe was seen as wrong.)

The truth is, the culture we have is decedant, and breeds weakness and lurid values.

As a result, when confronted withhte ugly reality of sin, of the misury and depression of one sexual partner after another with no emotional bunding, with the unsartisfyign marriages as one grows bored sexually withthe partner after having many others, and never havign loved them in the firts place, instead decieved by lust for them, of the children who are aborted, and their suferign mothers who live in guilt and shame, always knowign they murdered their own young, and yet refising to admit it, thus plunging into deep denial, and the unhappiness of beign taken advantage of, and the knwoledge of womn who have been used sexully that the men they lay with love them not, the poverty of the soul engendered by a materialist culture in which your vlaue as a Human being is determined not by your charecter and integrety, but by your monitary value, in which tradition and real freidnship is cast aside for selfishness,a nd a world in which we hand Chirldren Condoms and claim " They are goign to have sex anyway" and shrug off our responcibility to sin, we find stark denials that Sin is Sin and leads to misury.

Indeed, if we watch Tedelvision, we see those who engage in extramarital sex enjoyign themselves free of responcibility. We see the pleasures of Sin expounded with no consequence and often reward. when shown the fearsome reality, rather than own up to our sins and repent, we claim there is no sin and those who do not live in the life of depravity ar ementally ill and emotionally suppressed.

Does it really shock you that the BBC, which supports the modern Libertine philosophy, woudl deny that Abstenence is good? when they themselves sell to a culture the notion that Sex with many partners shows how good you are a lover?

-- ZAROVE (ZATOFF3@JUNO.COM), November 22, 2003.

I have seen many documentaries put together by the BBC. Their obvious liberal agenda is poor journalism, they have lost the ability to be objective (as much as can be).

I am repulsed by the BBC - the organisation is blatantly anti- Catholic, anti-Christian and among other things, morally bankrupt.

There is a serious need for good apologists to counter these types of organisations - com'n guys where are you?

God bless

Francois

-- Franc (francois.de-fleuriot@unilever.com), November 25, 2003.

The good apologists, liek good ministers, are silenced in favour of liberal preachers/preists, and of course paedophiles and adulterors. ( After all, wat makes the faith look bad, a Married Baptist having an affair with a younger woman, or a string, moral leadr tryign to change lives for the Better? They both certainly exist, but watch the BBC and you woul think the Honest ministers are rare and the corrupot ones are common.)

Liek in Nazi Fermany and communist nations, the Media was slowly taken over by a power-oreinted group pf people, whom we call Liberals, and who fevrishmly attempt the standard mode of Operation s as the others who have coem before them. This is to glorify their own pilosopies in the media,a ndthen systematically villify their oponants. In this case, and ost pther cases, the villified party is Christaanity.

They sll show weak willed, stupid, or bigoted Caricatures of Christains on television shows, liek Estenders, ans yet promote as the most successful, and best ballanced people those who embrace the liberal lifestyle. They thenm when doign documentatries, pretentd to present the facts, whe n in real.ity they are selective in what facts they show, and how these fats are presented. If they offer a counterargument at all, theyeviserate it as to render it unintellegable and make it appear weak. ( like the BBC "documentary" on Homosexuality as a social issue. Anyone who objected to Homosexuality was dispected as dilusional or stupid or bigoted. Rational objections whre never fully addressed, and when addressed swuftly dismissed with chap one line shots.)

The ciontrole of the Media leads to power beyonf scale, as now they can create hte illusion of theur Philosophies beign real, and htrmselves rational. for like any evil thing, they rely on projectign their own weaknesses on that which is strong, like the Chruch of Truth.

Instead, they will dileberatley go out of their way to systematically tear dowsn the Church, btu never in an open attack, at leats not right away. Instead, they prefer the old line of makign themselves appear eithe to be the victims, or to be protecting the ictims with exposes.

In this way, they seem to most peopel to simpley be presenting the facts, and defending the downtrodden, when in reality they are sinpley masking their true intent.

For, rather than promote themselves and issue the benefits of their philosophy and lifestyles, and expound its beuty, they atack the rical one. ( This, because they cannot cite beuty where noen exists.)

Look on a Chrisain website and Christains can spoeak of the beuty of CHrisy. Look on a liberal sire an you hear about the right Wing Nazi's.( Even though the Nazi's themselves where Liberals.)

The trick of behaviour here is to make somethign look worse than it is, so they tell a kerna,l of truth, then distory iy beyond reason.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), November 25, 2003.