A Cure for all STD's

[goofyjim]

This thread seems to be wrong. It should be titled a prevention for all STDs. There are no cures once you have them.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

And you present this post as an example of calm, rational debating style, do you?

No I do not. (This is an excellent example of your style - turning words around to suit your context! It was noted by others on the other thread.) I speak with a sense of urgency, because I know what you are capable of doing to an otherwise useful discussion. I have said that your postings tend to crude fabrication, as gently as I possibly could.

Go right ahead [and report me] - - but be sure you actually quote where I “misrepresented your professional observations.”

I will be happy to do so: you have already ‘misrepresented’ in your first posting on this thread which has been sent to the moderators with a note.

Actually, it was the insistence on the effectiveness of condoms – despite real world experience – that negated any possibility of Double Effect. If it don’t work, it can’t be Double Effect.

I think that this statement might be just as unclear to others as it is to me. Perhaps you would elaborate?

My sentiments, exactly – look at what happens when the “condom solution” is applied in nations like Botswana.

This comment has no meaning at all. I do not know what you mean by a ‘condom solution’. Furthermore, you focus again and again and again on Botswana. I do not know why, because I am not sure that you know anything except what I have told you about my fieldwork there. I live in South Africa, and before that I lived in Zambia. I asked yesterday whether, if you had lived in or worked in or been born in Botswana, you would like to brief us on what you learned there. But we have had no information from you.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Nevertheless, the primary means of transmission is through sexual congress. And that’s why the Politically Correct approach is to promote “safe sex” – which as your own post shows, isn’t really safe.

I stand by my original statement – those who tout condoms as the answer are encouraging the behavior that spreads the disease.

I think you are backtracking pretty fast here! Good one!

Of course the primary means of transmision is intercourse: no one has denied that. It is principally by heterosexual intercourse, rather than by bisexual or homosexual intercourse which is what you touted.

I have never heard of a ‘Politically Correct’ approach to ‘safe sex’. Could you elaborate? We could link that with the idea that any approach to HIV that uses a single-focus plan is not going to deliver ‘safe sex’.

Why did you not just say what you mean: that touting condoms leads to promiscuity? There is virtually no evidence that this is true, that I know of. Perhaps you can give us some evidence from any country you like, any community?

Let me finish with a quotation from Father K, SJ, Lusaka Zambia:

Some may fear that the application of this teaching would lead to promiscuity, that it would serve as an encouragement to young people to engage freely in sex since it provides them with a way of protecting themselves against HIV infection. It does not have to be so.

The guiding principle for a young person (indeed for every person) is to develop a mature sexuality that can realise its ultimate expression in a loving, sensitive and permanent relationship of union with another. Abstinence, deliberately chosen, freely striven for, supports this development. That is why it should inspire the life and behaviour of an unmarried person. In doing so, it also provides infallible protection against HIV infection. Hence, for an unmarried person, abstinence arising from a healthy sexuality is the first line of defence against HIV/AIDS.

But there is no reason to fear that having a fall-back protection against HIV infection, for circumstances where such abstinence is not observed, will promote irresponsible sexual behaviour. The first rule of the road is to drive carefully so that there will not be an accident. But one wears a seat belt so that if an accident should occur, there will be less risk of fatal damage. Wearing the seat belt is an act of responsibility. It does not encourage careless driving, but protects against the harmful outcomes of such driving or of unforeseen accidents. The use of condoms in sexual encounters between unmarried persons is an act of responsibility. Sanctioning their use does not encourage a careless sex life, but protects against possible life-threatening outcomes of the unlawful activity.

 

[jmcrae]

Does Father K. have an answer for how someone who is not intending to have sex would end up with a condom? I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Father K. himself probably does not carry a condom in his wallet. Instead, he carries sexual maturity and adult self control in his heart.

I think that’s what he should be teaching the kids how to do.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

It arrived there by airplane, from the United States, in the late 1980s.

HERE is a link to the history of AIDS.

The Avert site you refer to HERE looks good! But you need to read more carefully.

At the same time as cases of **Kaposi’s sarcoma **were being identified among gay men in San Fransisco, there was an outbreak of something called **slim **in Uganda - so-called because people could not eat, had terrible dysentery, and lost weight in dying. While *Time Magazine *concentrated on homosexuals in the US, a young Belgian researcher who is now head of the UNAIDS programme looked at the disease - being passed during heterosexual intercourse in Uganda - and eventually put two and two together. San Fransisco, Uganda, and Haiti (heterosexual transmission) were all being hit by the same disease. It took some time thereafter to identify the virus. This was in the very early 1980s - and Uganda was very hard hit, far worse than SF.

Africa is probably the origin of the prion (part of a virus) that causes human immunodeficiency. The prion is very similar to one carried by primates (monkies and apes), and as the focal point of the pandemic appears to be located somewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), it may be that the virus was transmitted from ape to human where it is customary to eat monkies. That seems to be the most plausible explanation of source.

There does appear to have been a Canadian bisexual male airplane cabin staff member who might be victim 1. On the other hand, there are reports that there are blood samples that contain what appears to be the virus in older blood samples. That might be where the idea that the virus was flown to Africa in the late 1980s came from although that is quite clearly erroneous.

There has been a theory that the virus was spread in the vaccine used to protect huge African populations in central Africa from polio, and several books have been written about that. The theory is not likely for a variety of reasons. I am not an epidemiologist, but the theory is not convincing to me.

People - friends and colleagues, workers on my farm, officials in the Ministry of Education, babies in the village where my children grew up - were already dying of this new disease in the early 1980s. That means that, as the virus has an incubation period of perhaps 5-9 years (depending on the original health of the infected individual), Bauleni people in Zambia, others in Lusaka and environs, were infected say mid-1970s.

The plague arrived in Zambia and Uganda as early as the mid 1970s. It did not fly in by plane in the late 1980s, when thousands were already dead or dying of HIV/AIDS. It probably originated somewhere in Central Africa, when a man or woman ate a monkey.

 

[vern_humphrey]

No I do not.
Then you admit it was an irrational and spiteful personal attack?
Carol Coombe;2240750:

I will be happy to do so: you have already ‘misrepresented’ in your first posting on this thread which has been sent to the moderators with a note.

They will no doubt cut off my buttons, break my sword over my head and drum me out of the forums.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

People keep proposing condoms as the cure for AIDS. Big bad Catholic Church forbids condoms, thus causing AIDS to spread rampantly.

Just wondering how the big bad Catholic Church is causing doctors to get AIDS from their patients by forbidding them to use condoms. That’s all.

Who said that? Or do you have a grudge against the Catholic Church?

 

[vern_humphrey]

I think you are backtracking pretty fast here! Good one!

You think wrong.

Of course the primary means of transmision is intercourse: no one has denied that. It is principally by heterosexual intercourse, rather than by bisexual or homosexual intercourse which is what you touted.

I think you are backtracking pretty fast here! Good one!

And I merely state that the male-to-male and male-to-female transmission is more likely than female-tomale transmission.

I seem to recall you posting some statistics that confirm that.

I have never heard of a ‘Politically Correct’ approach to ‘safe sex’. Could you elaborate? We could link that with the idea that any approach to HIV that uses a single-focus plan is not going to deliver ‘safe sex’.

The Politically Correct approach is that condoms mean “safe sex” and that abstinence and faithful marriage is a non-starter.

It’s usually accompanied by an attack on the Cathoic Church for opposing comdoms.

Why did you not just say what you mean: that touting condoms leads to promiscuity? There is virtually no evidence that this is true, that I know of. Perhaps you can give us some evidence from any country you like, any community?

So what happend in Botswana? If condoms were going to work anywhere, they’d have worked there.

 

[jmcrae]

Who said that? Or do you have a grudge against the Catholic Church?

No, of course I don’t have a grudge against the Catholic Church.

I was asking how those who blame the Catholic Church for AIDS in Africa (you, for example) explain how that doctor could have defended himself with a condom, in the instance that you had cited earlier.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Originally Posted by Carol Coombe
Who said that? Or do you have a grudge against the Catholic Church?

No, of course I don’t have a grudge against the Catholic Church.

I was asking how those who blame the Catholic Church for AIDS in Africa (you, for example) explain how that doctor could have defended himself with a condom, in the instance that you had cited earlier.

Note the tactic employed here – the misrepresentation of a post, followed by an attack on the poster’s Catholic faith.

 

[jmcrae]

Note the tactic employed here – the misrepresentation of a post, followed by an attack on the poster’s Catholic faith.

Thank you. I was noticing that, too.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Thank you. I was noticing that, too.

Both of those – especially the latter – are violations of the rules. And from a person who boasts she’s reporting me to the moderator.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Carol,

I sympathize with you that there some anti-humanitarian remarks in this and other threads but I think the only practical solution is to start testing for HIV on a global scale and if one tests positive advise them not to have sex with any other partner. Condoms do not prevent the spread of this disease. I have read reports that even under the best of circumstances semen can get through a condom. When you consider that the virus is infinitesimally smaller than that how can a condom prevent it from getting through? I hope you understand my take on this.

I ***do ***understand, believe me I do.

First, the human rights issues that surrounded testing for HIV (the right to privacy inter alia) until about 8 years ago have been reviewed in terms of the rights of those who do not have HIV, who do not want to get HIV, and in terms of the costs to the public and private fiscus of ***not ***testing for HIV. We know that we have to plan, and we can only plan by knowing how many people are infected.

Earlier, the only stats we had came from antenatal clinics across countries which reported on HIV prevalence among pregnant women. These stats of course did not capture many elements of the population who were not using public health facilities. But when you lose 10,000 teachers in one province (KwaZulu-Natal in SA), you need to think again. You need to plan: SA trains for a total of 3,000 new teachers per year; we have facilities to put out 5,000 teachers per year; it is estimated (without testing) that we will need to put out 30,000 teachers per year to replace those dead and dying of HIV. Of course, that does not take into account the extent to which teachers have or will have access to drugs; or their willingness to retire early rather than trying to teach until they drop because of financial need. Because SA needs to know how many teachers to train, it needs to test. And it has tested, and now it can plan properly in order to limit the damage the pandemic will cause to education at all levels in South Africa.

Of course condoms, on their own, will not prevent the spread of this disease. I posted last night on the other thread, a couple of times, the best information I could get on the efficacy of condoms. They are very very effective in preventing transmission when used properly. The idea that the prion slips through the rubber is false. Furthermore, the virus is extremely fragile, and would simply not make headway swimming like crazy to get out of the condom and into another bodily fluid. Ordinary domestic bleach, even ordinary water, is enough to kill this virus.

We are not all falling over from contact with this virus - in sporting matches, at nursery schools where little kids are terribly messy about fluids and sharing food, in hospitals where patients are cared for, in homes where infected parents live with small children or an infected husband lives with his wife safely, over years. There are only a few ways that the virus can get into the blood stream. Condoms, used properly and in conjunction with other tools, can help to stem the tide of this tsunami. Go Google.

I do thank you for this note, and hope that you will understand my point of view, and my concern about how to present it in a respectful way to a largely Catholic audience. But when a doctor or a medical researcher tells me something about this virus, this disease, I listen. And then I have to make a decision.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Quote:
Originally Posted by vern humphrey forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cab/viewpost.gif
Let me understand this – is sex not the primary means of transmission of AIDS?

Yes, sex is the principal but not the only way in which the virus is transmitted. What I said here however is that the sexual component of HIV transmission, which we usually focus on, is made more complex by other factors - such as whether the person having sex is poor or rich, homeless or sheltered, educated or not educated, has access to ARV drugs or not. All these things complicate our approach to what is essentially a sexually transmitted disease. It should be said that if this were something like mononucleosis - kissing disease, transmitted by personal contact of the close kind - we would not be having all this bother, no? But here we have penises and vaginas and sex, and Victorian hangups, so we get confused and hungup on how to respond.

I’d also like to revisit something you said earlier -that we are 30 years into the pandemic]. Behavior change will take decades – and we’ve already wasted three of those decades, right? And adopted a strategy of practive inhibition – by encouraging “safe sex” we make it even more difficult to convince people that abstinence and sexual fidelity is the solution.

The response by national and international communities to the HIV pandemic has been inefficient, corrupt, ignorant, financially under-resourced, run by people in denial, politically fraught. Compare the response to 9/11 and the response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

‘We’ have not wasted three decades; governments and agencies and corrupt individuals have wasted time and money and energy and lives. Yes, it took a long time to identify the nature of the virus; yes it took too long to understand the nature of its transmission and spread, infection and prevalence. But once ‘we’ understood, we did little. And if you read my papers (Google Carol Coombe) you will see how hard many people fought for action from corrupt, uncaring, incapacitated governments - who knew they needed to provide leadership, diversify resources, create combined plans with nongovernment agencies, develop awareness and provide information to people and agencies, to contain the spread. The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa actually sued the Minister of Education for not distributing drugs - and won its case.

At the same time, many churches including the Catholic church, were providing support and relief, homebased care to orphans, to adults in distress because of infection and unemployment, taking on some of the burden of care not provided by government.

Read my lips, condoms are only one tool, one facet, one element of what needs to be done to overcome, prevent, reduce, challenge, kill off HIV and AIDS.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Yes. Condoms in Africa are part of their genocidal plan. AIDS is the excuse they are using to get condoms into Africa. Once they are in there, it will be impossible to get them out again, even after the crisis is over. The damage will be done.
Planned Parenthood had nothing to do with that - that was Doctor Billings, who is actively anti-genocide and anti-Planned Parenthood.
Yes - yes, they are.

Whoo! This is all new to me. Please tell me who is ‘they’ and what is their ‘genocidal plan’, and what is the motivation for killing off millions of perfectly good people?

 

[Carol_Coombe]

This thread seems to be wrong. It should be titled a prevention for all STDs. There are no cures once you have them.

Once called STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) they are now called commonly STIs (sexually transmitted infection).

And yes, most of them are curable, have been since penicillin was invented towards the end of WWII. Go Google. (I can’t spell ghonorrea properly or I would look it out!)

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Does Father K. have an answer for how someone who is not intending to have sex would end up with a condom? I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Father K. himself probably does not carry a condom in his wallet. Instead, he carries sexual maturity and adult self control in his heart.

I think that’s what he should be teaching the kids how to do.

Blessed Fr K, SJ, turned 78 today, and I hope he continues to be as strong as he has been when receiving multiple international awards over the past five years.

He knows that any sensible student would carry a condom to a beer-fest or a sporting match or a function on campus.

I will not comment on your comments on Fr K which make me feel sick at heart.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Then you admit it was an irrational and spiteful personal attack?

There you go again: turning words around into your perception! What I said was, and I quote (read my lips):

’ No I do not. I speak with a sense of urgency, because I know what you are capable of doing to an otherwise useful discussion. I have said that your postings tend to crude fabrication, as gently as I possibly could. ’

I see no spiteful, personal attack here. Can’t be bothered: I am just trying to keep you away from what are possibly spoiler tactics.

They will no doubt cut off my buttons, break my sword over my head and drum me out of the forums.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Are you worried? Or do you have a sense of responsibility to others?

 

[Carol_Coombe]

You think wrong.

This is tiresome, and it is 0300 in South Africa.

I think you are backtracking pretty fast here! Good one!

No backtracking: just stating what I always have, and which I assume you may have read.

And I merely state that the male-to-male and male-to-female transmission is more likely than female-tomale transmission. I seem to recall you posting some statistics that confirm that.

That is indeed correct. I simply elaborated on your formulation.

The Politically Correct approach is that condoms mean “safe sex” and that abstinence and faithful marriage is a non-starter.

That is certainly something I have never heard, ever. And it is not reflected in Fr K’s paras above.

It’s usually accompanied by an attack on the Cathoic Church for opposing comdoms.

If you think in terms of attack, that is your problem. The international community, humanity, the global village - all have a problem with beliefs, traditions, customs, issues, habits, behaviours that are antithetical to stalling HIV and AIDS. The belief promulgated by the Catholic Church that condoms are immoral, that the distribution of condoms is immoral, and that the use of condoms to prevent death is less important than not using condoms because this might prevent the creation of life, has created problems for those trying to plan strategic responses to the pandemic. I think that puts into words what you might be saying. There is no attack in this. This is a statement of fact: CC teaching on condoms is causing problems for prevention strategies. Full stop. But that is the choice of CC and its adherents.

So what happened in Botswana? If condoms were going to work anywhere, they’d have worked there.

Tell me why you are so interested in Botswana. This is about the 8th or 10th time you have raised this issue. There are 19 Commonwealth countries in Africa, Botswana being one of them. I worked with all of them. Try asking about another country for a change?

WRT Botswana, yes they distributed condoms. Yes, they taught life skills in schools. Yes, they have developed a counselling programme. Yes, they set up an HIV unit in the Ministry of Education, and developed a national HIV policy. No they have not done much to lower the infection rate, but they are having a degree of success in distributing ARV drugs to as many people as possible.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Note the tactic employed here – the misrepresentation of a post, followed by an attack on the poster’s Catholic faith.

I think I recall there was a rather long and fretful description of your ‘debating’ style in the closed thread on HIV and CC last night which somehow reflects this comment - but your postings were much longer. I will not quote the post here, but it is there for all to see.