Letters | Sunday, 05 April 2009

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AIDS and the Catholic Church

The article “Condoms also a solution, says ministry on Pope’s AIDS claim” (MaltaToday 28 March) is, predictably, totally critical of Benedict XVI’s view that condoms are not effective in curtailing the spread of AIDS in Africa. Apparently, there is never one redeeming factor to be found in any of the opinions expressed by His Holiness.
I feel the writer did his readers a great disservice by failing to quote other sources which expressed agreement with the Pope. Comments which do not come from Vatican sources, but from internationally-acclaimed experts on AIDS research.
Edward C. Green, the liberal and atheist director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, has said that the evidence confirms that the Pope is correct in his assessment that condom distribution exacerbates the problem of AIDS.
“The pope is correct,” Green admitted in an interview with the National Review Online in the US, “or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope’s comments.”
“There is,” Green added, “a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the US-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.”
It is a pity that MaltaToday, which I find to be an incisive and stimulating read, has chosen to jump on the bandwagon of anti-religion (and more specifically anti-Catholicism) that characterises mainstream western media today. I feel readers, of whom I presume a fair proportion to be practicing Catholics, deserve a more balanced view. At least, please respect our intelligence, if you do not respect our beliefs.

Mario A. Mallia
Birkirkara

Editorial Note
MaltaToday seeks to take no stand when reporting the news: in this case, the newspaper asked for the comment of Malta’s authorities on sexual health, namely the government and the head of the GU clinic. The public interest here was served by delivering the point of view of the health authorities in reaction to a statement by the Head of the Catholic Church. The newspaper can hardly be accused of jumping on an “anti-religion bandwagon” for not delivering viewpoints that are consonant with the Pope’s; this alone does not suffice to a disrespect of peoples’ beliefs.

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