Pope Says Condoms Make AIDS Worse

[SzczerbiakManiac]

from The Advocate (http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid75485.asp)"You can't resolve [AIDS] with the distribution of condoms," the Pope told reporters on Tuesday aboard a plane headed to Africa, a continent ravaged by AIDS. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."<bangs head against table>

[Ghoulish Delight]

I often trust the Pope for my scientific analyses.

[mousepod]

To paraphrase the recent episode of South Park: "he is re-tar-ded"

[Snowflake]

Idiot. I'm sorry, the Pope is a butthead.

[Moonliner]

Now now guys, we all know the Pope is infallible so let's run the numbers:

1 in 1,000: Chance to contract aids during unprotected vaginal sex

6 in 100: Chance of contracting aids with a condom (relative to unprotected)

So, let's say we have a population of 1,000,000 HIV positives getting busy with non infected partners.

You could expect:

1,000 New cases of HIV if they all have unprotected sex.

60 New cases of HIV if they all use condoms.

So in order for the popes claim to work, enough couples need to choose abstinence over sex simply because they do not have access to a condom.

We can only have 60,000 couples having unprotected sex or we get more cases of HIV, so that implies that out of our original 1,000,000 couples ~940,000 of them must opt out of sex due to not having a condom.

Sure, that makes sense.

[cirquelover]

I saw this yesterday and thought " this guy is truly an idiot!" especially when you add in some of the other hair brained things he's come up with! I'm sure Africa is thrilled to have him there for the first pontiff visit :rolleyes:

[Alex]

Well, he's right. If everybody had sex the way he thinks it should be had then it would be a more reliable block to spreading AIDS than condom use.

Sure, it is stupid public policy but religion generally isn't in the business of telling you how best to sin.

[flippyshark]

This goes beyond idiocy and into criminal atrocity.

[Gemini Cricket]

Once again, the Catholic Church illustrates that they are profoundly out of touch with just about everything. Is this latest comment of his about condoms any surprise? No. It's been the church's stance for a long time, even in the 80's when HIV/AIDS was discovered and was killing hundreds of thousands of people. The man is an idiot. But I also believe that even many Catholics disagree with him on this one.

[Not Afraid]

The Pope says it, it MUST be true!

[Strangler Lewis]

I believe that the Pope's proclamations are only infallible when he declares them to be infallible, which he very rarely does. This is clearly not one of those times.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Isn't Catholicism over yet?

[lashbear]

anyway, I like the way the pope saved the italian fishing industry by declaring you have to eat fish on fridays.

[Alex]

I know that was just meant as a joke but I looked into that last year during lent and found the answer interesting.

Turns out it is myth that "fish fridays" was established by the pope to help the fishing industry. The original proscription of meat but allowing fish was simply and oddity of how Latin and English differ in their linguistic categorization. To a Latin speaker the word being used when saying "no meat" simply didn't include fish. Its kind of like I were to now make a rule that said "no beef on Tuesdays" but over the next 1000 years the language changed so that "beef" means any animal byproduct. Those people a millennia hence would wonder about the stupidity of being able to eat porkchops while saying we weren't eating beef.

The original practice of lenten fasting, however, over time did became so important to fisheries that when observance of lenten rules began to wane in the 1500s during the Reformation, it was civil government that stepped in and began enforcing lenten fasting specifically to prop up the fisheries.

So it wasn't the pope that did it first but rather those radical upstarts, the kings and queens of England shortly after they took on the mantle of heading the non-papist Church of England in the 1540s.

[CoasterMatt]

Here's (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/martin.condoms/) an excellent commentary on why the Pope is wrong.

[lashbear]

VAM yet again ! I always assumed it was a furphy, but never went to the bother of looking it up. Fascinating stuff!

[Gemini Cricket]

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/braddoc310/hajo.jpg