Call for evidence-based AIDS prevention in Africa

When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn't helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him. In 2003, a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa." Ed Green in the Washington Post