A new "Study"

I'm a Catholic (Russian Orthodox) and I personally believe in condoms for the prevention of disease transmission because they work. I spent several years as an unpaid HIV/AIDs counseler and promoted condoms. Often two people in a relationship who use barriers and one is infected, the other can avoid infection. I personally know two men, together 15 years, one is still negative and the other has always been positive. They credit condoms. They also have made it a point to distribute condoms at parades, and distribute literature as well. Condoms work. You can twist statistics, but when it comes down to the end of the day gloves, dams, condoms, a little extra lube and avoidance of someone's possiley infectious bodily fluids can save your life.

Your partner or potential partner may not even know they have trich or chlamydia or hepatitis B or C either. And people lie. less

Ok, I found the "study" in question. It's actually a "workshop," where a bunch of scientists got together to discuss studies that had been done, and to write a report about what had been found. If you'd like to read it for yourself, the PDF can be found here: link


A few interesting tidbits directly from the text. I promise not to pull them out of context.

"The meeting was not intended to make public health policy recommendations regarding the role of condoms in HIV/STD prevention policy and programs."

"In general, the Panel found the published epidemiology literature to be inadequate to definitively answer the question posed to the workshop participants."
(Translation: we don't know, because there's not enough information)


Based on this first page alone, the entire article Airen found is complete bunk. They're not twisting the facts, they're breaking and rewriting them. Regardless of their religious background, I have to call bullshit on this one.


Bottom line:
"Summary
The Panel stressed that the absence of definitive conclusions reflected inadequacies of the evidence available and should not be interpreted as proof of the adequacy or inadequacy of the condom to reduce the risk of STDs other than HIV transmission in men and women and gonorrhea in men. To definitely answer the remaining questions about condom effectiveness for preventing STD infections will require well-designed and ethically sound clinical studies."


The rest of the article is very interesting reading, but it basically says that there's not enough sound data to know for sure, and it'll be really hard to get it ethically (without needlessly exposing lots of people). Also, you can't monitor people's condom use directly. All you can do is ask them how often they use them, how they use them, how often they have problems with condoms, etc. Like all self-report methods, this is subject to the fluid nature of our memories; almost no self-report measure of behavior is perfectly accurate. less

Conservatives (especially those in favor of abstinence) always harp on the limitations of condoms. They are certainly not perfect. There are, unfortunately, many many ways condoms can lose their effectiveness: failing to roll it all the way down the shaft, leaving it on too long after you cum, not using enough lube, not getting rid of the air bubble at the top (allows them to pop while you are using them), etc. The other thing that happens with condoms is that people don't put them on when they get started. They take a few practice strokes before putting it on (even I am guilty of that one!)

However, condoms used properly are highly effective. Instead of harping on the limitations of condoms, those abstinence lovers should focus their energies on educating people on the proper way to use them. less