Here is the National Review Online interview with Harvard AIDS expert, Dr. Edward C. Green (with my emphases and comments:

From Saint Peter’s Square to Harvard Square
Media coverage of papal comments on AIDS in Africa is March madness.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

‘We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.”

So notes Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, in response to papal press comments en route to Africa this week.

Benedict XVI said, in response to a French reporter’s question asking him to defend the Church’s position on fighting the spread of AIDS, characterized by the reporter as “frequently considered unrealistic and ineffective”:

I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with those who are suffering, a readiness — even through personal sacrifice — to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.  [NOTE:  I don’t believe this is the accurate, official version of what the pope said.  That can be found in this article.]

“The pope is correct,” Green told National Review Online Wednesday, “or put it a better way, the best evidence [evidence!] we have supports the pope’s comments. He stresses that “condoms have been proven to not be effective at the ‘level of population.’”
“There is,” Green adds, “a consistent association shown by our best studies, [studies!] including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”

Green added: “I also noticed that the pope said ‘monogamy’ was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than ‘abstinence.’ [A very important distinction.  Lots of people are attacking the pope’s position because of the old claim that abstinence is impossible, unreasonable, barbaric!  Well, it’s really none of those things, of course, but that’s beside the point.] The best and latest empirical evidence [more evidence!] indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates (the other major factor is male circumcision).”

And while, as Travis Kavulla writes from Kenya today, the international media will ignore all sorts of fascinating new stories about church and civilizational growth in favor of a sexier, albeit way-too-familiar storyline, Green has some encouraging news: The pope is not alone. “More and more AIDS experts are coming to accept the above. [So, all the people who are singling out the pope and Catholic moral teaching for their criticisms are either uninformed or dishonest.] The two countries with the worst HIV epidemics, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns to discourage multiple and concurrent partners, and to encourage fidelity.” [Again: monogamy, not abstinence.]

The pope added during that Q&A, “I would say that our double effort is to renew the human person internally, to give spiritual and human strength to a way of behaving that is just towards our own body and the other person’s body; and this capacity of suffering with those who suffer, to remain present in trying situations.”

We need to, in other words, treat people as people. [Which necessarily includes not treating people as expendable sexual objects.] Reason with them and show them there is a better way to live, respectful of themselves and others. It’s a common-sense message that isn’t madness [Boy is that a counter-cultural statement!] whether you’re in Africa or dealing with hormonal American teenagers. It’s a hard message to hear over the same-old silly debates, parodies, and dismissals. [Which is mostly what one finds in the secular media and society, because God forbid anybody should engage the issue with the objectivity, gravitas, and intellectual rigor it deserves.] But it’s one that is based on real life—and acknowledged not just in Saint Peter’s Square but in Harvard Square.

Wow–all that talk about evidence and studies!  Could it be that our brilliant Holy Father has done his homework?  Or could it simply be that science and Catholic teaching are on the same page, part of the same truth?  I’d say both are the case.

Advertisements