[Wow!

What a smear.

What Dr. Green has said, and with which I agree, is that incorrect use + inconsistent use + DISINHIBITION --> more HIV infection.

Furthermore, NO ONE of any substance is talking about withholding condoms.

The approach is A for Abstain, B for BE faithful, and CCCCCCCCCCC for CONDOMS.

In point of fact, under PEPFAR -- the Bush admin program -- the US has distributed more condoms than any other nation on earth -- and more than were distributed under Bill Clinton.

So the whole debate about condoms and the Bush admin is a canard.

Also, someone needs to explain to Melinda (who sounds like a four-star bitch to me) that it's not "safe" sex -- it's "safe-er" sex.

Abstinence is safe.

Fidelity with an uninfected partner is safe.

Frot is safe.

Oral, vaginal, and anal with a condom is to some degree safe-er than without -- but it's NOT safe.

Indeed, the Buchbinder et al study found that among MSM, anal with a condom is only ONE percentage point safer that "UNprotected" anal.

In other words, practically speaking, it's not safer at all.

What's unreal about people like Bill and Melinda is their eagerness to spin spin spin the politically correct line on condoms.

But the reality is that the condom failure rate over a year's time in *vaginal* is 20%.

And it's 10 to 20 times higher in anal -- and that's among HETERO *couples*.

People who live together.

Not strangers in the night.

Further, those figures are NOT coming out of the religious right.

They come out of, respectively, the Cochrane Institute and a USAID researcher, peer-reviewed and published, named Daniel Halperin.]

Melinda Gates also called into question the good-will of condom opponents, accusing them of having ultimately destructive ulterior motives. "In some countries with widespread Aids epidemics," she said, "leaders have declared the distribution of condoms immoral, ineffective or both. Some have argued that condoms do not protect against HIV, but in fact help spread it.

[Actually, that's a folk belief among some Africans.

Which perhaps reflects the reality that people who rely on condoms -- like our Mr. Andriote -- are more likely to get infected.]

Melinda: This is a serious obstacle to ending Aids. In the fight against Aids, condoms save lives. If you oppose the distribution of condoms, something is more important to you than saving lives."

[This one's not just a smear, it's a classic BIG LIE.

That is, a complete reversal of the truth.

First off, folks like Dr. Green are NOT opposed to the distribution of condoms; they -- and we -- are opposed to condom campaigns, which focus exclusively on condoms, because studies have shown that such campaigns increase risk behavior, and with it, HIV prevalance.

Whereas A and B interventions, and other forms of PRIMARY behavior change, including the avoidance of anal, ELIMINATE AIDS risk.

In point of fact, throughout the world, those who are HIV free, and indeed the overwhelming majority of people, including "men who have sex with men," practice A and B -- and don't do anal.

Here's the TRUTH: If you oppose ABC something is more important to you than saving lives.

Like preserving the sexual revolution and analism.

There's a DIRECT CORRELATION IN BOTH AMERICA AND AFRICA OF AGGRESSIVE MARKETING OF CONDOMS AND HIV PREVALENCE.

And all the Microsoft MONEY in Melinda's world will not change that.]

Unlike the 2004 International Aids Conference, where Uganda received an enormous amount of coverage for successfully and dramatically reducing its HIV/Aids infection rates by means of the ABC program, Gates' opening remarks seemed to indicate that this year's conference will continue to focus on forgetting Uganda's behaviour-driven successes and return to the traditional Aids conference agenda of artificial and chemical solutions to the pandemic.

[Actually, while it's true that Uganda was covered, the crowd was not sympathetic to Uganda -- they booed a Ugandan teenager who said he'd chosen abstinence.]

The dearth of an objective discussion of behavioural solutions that strike at the very heart of the Aids pandemic, and the exclusive focus on superficial chemical solutions, however, is nothing new at international Aids conferences. Dr. Edward C. Green, PhD, an AIDS prevention worker and senior research scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development complained in 2002 that presentations from the USAID and Centers for Disease Control staff made no mention of abstinence or faithfulness in assessing the Ugandan situation. "They spoke exclusively about latex, drugs, vaccine research," he complained.

So: Ms. Gates is lying.

Why?

To support the multipartnered pansexualist "sexual revolution."

Yet this very next report testifies to the fact that "multipartnering" -- that is, promiscuity -- is driving the epidemic in Swaziland, a tiny country in southern Africa where condoms have been promoted for YEARS and YEARS and YEARS and YEARS -- without success:

Reuters Health

August 15, 2006

Multiple partnerships fueling AIDS epidemic

By Terri Coles

TORONTO (Reuters Health) - In Swaziland they are called "lishendes" -- multiple concurrent sexual partners -- and they are the driving factor behind the HIV epidemic in southern Africa, said researchers on Monday at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

Instead of casual sexual encounters with multiple partners, established partnerships outside of marriage are fueling a generalized epidemic in southern African countries. These partnerships often involve inconsistent condom use and occur in the context of low rates of male circumcision.

At the conference in a presentation titled "Prevention Works: What's The Evidence," researchers put forward evidence for various HIV prevention programs aimed at increasing education, reducing stigma and changing behavior.

"In southern Africa and a country like Swaziland we're talking about a very generalized epidemic," said Dr. Daniel Halperin of the US Agency for International Development's Southern Africa HIV-AIDS Program in Mbabane, Swaziland.

Halperin described the HIV infection rate in Swaziland as "astonishingly high." The prevalence rate for the general adult population was 33.4 percent in 2005. Multiple concurrent sexual partnerships are a main driver of the generalized epidemic in Swaziland, Dr. Halperin said. These partnerships are not casual sexual encounters or polygamy, but are instead longer-term relationships outside of marriage.

"Data worldwide consistently shows that people with a higher number of partners have a higher prevalence of HIV," Halperin said. Partner reduction can be one important element of HIV prevention, but it's not the only factor to consider.

Men in countries like Thailand and the United States report more lifetime sexual partners than men in some African countries, but have a lower prevalence rate of HIV infection. The problem is not that Africans have more sexual partners, Halperin said, but that concurrent partnerships lead to villages becoming linked up in sexual networks, aiding the spread of the virus. Having two or three regular sexual partners leads to an increase in the risk of HIV infection.

A large majority of those who responded to a baseline survey of 2000 adults in 12 randomly selected communities -- done before the start of a sexual behavior communication campaign in Swaziland -- agreed that lishendes were common or very common in their communities.

During the study, many respondents said that multiple partnerships were harmful to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Females in particular felt that choosing to have only one sexual partner at a time was important for prevention and the fight against HIV/AIDS in Swaziland.

A government-led campaign was launched in June 2005, and a follow-up survey of 2000 adults was conducted in the same 12 communities a year later, along with three rounds of focus group discussions with men and women in each of the communities.

The campaign focused on a message of abstinence and monogamy. Advertisements aimed at young people promoted waiting to have sex, while those for adults presented messages like "I choose to have only one sex partner" and "I'm circumcised, proud of it...and I'm still faithful to my partner."

Another group of advertisements had fear-based messages highlighting the risks of multiple partnerships, with messages like "Why kill your family?"

The advertisements were controversial in their approach, going against a belief by some NGOs and activist groups that fear-based messages are not effective, Halperin said.

"Many of people in the (focus) group said 'You should show people dying of AIDS, you should scare people'," Halperin said. "We're seeing a bit of a disconnect between what people in the community say and what we, as experts, believe is the right way to do AIDS prevention."

[Translation: The PEOPLE are saying that SCARE TACTICS WORK.

They worked in Uganda:

Moreover, those tactics are reasonable.

If something's deadly -- like arsenic -- it makes sense to label it as such.]

The controversial advertisements were widely discussed in Swaziland, where they were subject to heavy public and media attention. In their surveys after the fact, researchers found that more than 80 percent of respondents were aware of the campaign. Anecdotally, he said that the advertisements were widely discussed in the general population.

So: Promiscuity, in the form of multiple concurrent partners, SPREADS DISEASE.

Even when the partners are well known to each other.

Because there are overlapping groups of partners.

Promiscuity spreads HIV.

Abstinence and Fidelity do not.

Next up is another report, this time from Canada, that primary behavior change -- in this case an abstinence program -- does work.

National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)

August 15, 2006 Tuesday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

Teaching abstinence reduces teen sex: study: Condom use not affected

By Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service

DATELINE: TORONTO

TORONTO - Abstinence-only programs can reduce sexual activity among young teens and effectively delay their "sexual debut" without discouraging future condom use, according to a new study of the controversial HIV prevention strategy.

A study of 662 African-American Grade 6 and 7 students from inner-city middle schools in Philadelphia found those taught an abstinence-only approach to sex were less likely to have had sexual intercourse at 24 months' follow-up compared to those put through a "safer sex" intervention that emphasized condom use but made no mention of abstinence.

And while Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president, told delegates to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto yesterday that abstinence programs delay sexual activity but make teens less likely to use condoms when they do start having sex, the study found the opposite to be true.

"It did not reduce intentions to use condoms, it did not reduce beliefs about the efficacy of condoms, it did not decrease consistent condom use and it did not decrease condom use at last sexual [encounter]," lead author John Jemmott, of the University of Pennsylvania, said.

The youngsters in the study ranged in age from 10 to 15; half were girls. Twenty-three per cent said they had had sexual intercourse at least once before the study began.

"There aren't any studies that show that children are less likely to use condoms as a result of an abstinence intervention. I've looked in the literature, there are no studies that show that," Mr. Jemmott said in an interview.

[So what you've got is Bill Clinton spouting a liberal shibboleth about abstinence programs that is not true, with no support in the literature.]

"But you have to be concerned about it, because many abstinence-only until marriage programs give misinformation about condoms and present the failure rates in a way that would discourage people from using them."

[Should abstinence-only programs misinform?

Of course not.

But neither should condom campaigns and their liberal friends.

Yet, as is obvious, Bill Clinton and Bill and Melinda Gates are out there misinforming their fool heads off.

This is NOT about HIV guys.

It's about who controls society.]

At the massive AIDS meeting being held here this week, abstinence-only programs are about as popular as Alcoholics Anonymous at a brewery. Planned Parenthood has called the approach "one of the religious right's greatest challenge to the nation's sexual health." In the United States, federally funded abstinence programs have been found to push distorted and inaccurate information about sexual health, homosexuality and abortion.

But Mr. Jemmott said not all abstinence interventions can be lumped together "and thrown away," and there is no logical reason that an abstinence intervention cannot be effective.

The abstinence intervention in his study promoted abstinence from vaginal, anal and oral sex until a later time in life when youth would be able to handle the consequences of a sexual relationship.

Researchers removed all mention of condoms, other than telling facilitators not to say anything negative about them. The team involved a researcher from the University of Waterloo.

The youth were followed for two years. Through role-playing, videos and video clips and group discussions, "We changed the intention to have sex," Mr. Jemmott said. It also delayed the sexual debut of youth who were virgins when the study began.

"We caused them to have more positive attitudes towards abstinence and the negative consequences of engaging in sexual activity at an early age, including less likely to achieve one's career goals."

So: abstinence programs can be effective.

Once again, do we support abstinence programs which mis-inform?

NO.

That's the religious right in action.

In my view, Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation and Kay Warren of Saddleback, an evangelical mega-church, are gargoyles who deserve each other.

But while those powerful women duke it out, the truth is being lost and people all over the world are getting infected and dying.

In the meantime, "AIDS activists" continue to attack universal testing, which most people now agree is not just a good idea, but a necessity:

USA Today

August 14, 2006

Plan for routine universal AIDS testing draws strong reaction

AFP/Getty Images:

Members of ACT-UP protest against the Bush administration policies on HIV/AIDS during the XVI International Aids Conference in Toronto, Canada, Monday.

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

TORONTO -- A push to make HIV tests as routine as a test for high blood pressure provoked a backlash here Monday from opponents who say AIDS' lingering stigma makes the risk of disclosure too great, especially when many patients still can't get access to treatment.

But doctors who treat AIDS patients say the risks of people not knowing whether they are HIV-positive are greater, because those who are diagnosed with the disease in its late stages die within months and people who get treatment can survive for decades. Studies also show that people who test positive change their behavior and are much less likely to infect others.

"We've had 40,000 new cases in the USA a year for 16 years, and we haven't made a dent in that," John Bartlett of Johns Hopkins University said at the 16th International AIDS Conference. "It's a no-brainer. You have to test."

..

Among MSM in the US, HIV prevalence is highest among Black gay men -- many of whom don't know they're infected.

Routine testing would give them a vital piece of information.

But as usual, a powerful segment of AIDS Inc is opposed to even that very limited commonsense solution.

Guys, I could go on and on with these articles.

But you get the idea.

These big international AIDS conferences have devolved into massive battlegrounds in the culture wars, in which condoms stand for secularism, the sexual revolution, feminism, abortion rights, and of course analism; and abstinence stands for the religious right and something which used to be called "traditional values."

What's completely lost is any serious attempt to deal with prevention of the disease.

vWhich is actually rather simple -- as we already know, as Uganda demonstrated years ago, and as you see confirmed in Daniel Halperin's study out of Swaziland.

It's also ironic, as I've said before, that condoms, which destroy sexual pleasure and intimacy, have now become the means of preserving the sexual revolution.

What's left is lots of joyless, mistrustful, "sex," and lots of disease.

And no pleasure.

And then there's FROT.

Lots of sex, lots of pleasure, no HIV.

And no interest from AIDS Inc or ANAL Inc.

They'd rather die than switch.

While the religious right continues to condemn any sexual expression of affection between men.

Yet, as we've seen, sex between men is not incidental but core to Natural Masculinity.

Free of pseudo-masculine restraints, a Masculine Man will NATURALLY seek a SEXUAL BOND with another Masculine Man.

The analists are in denial about anal.

The religious right is in denial about MEN and MASCULINITY.

That's the world we live in -- for now.

Bill and Melinda Gates have a lot of money.

So do Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback -- the evangelical mega-church.

But we have the TRUTH.

The Gates Foundation could provide every man on earth with a lifetime supply of condoms.

That would not change the fact that condoms are a failed intervention.

Because men want sensation and intimacy from sex.

Not latex.

The religious right could teach every teenager on earth that the sexual expression of love between men is unnatural and ungodly.

It wouldn't matter.

Men have a God-given need and right to bond sexually with other men.

That need is core to their Masculinity.

And it cannot be forever suppressed.

BUT -- a lot of lives can be damaged and distorted, and many people die, due to the sorts of lies being put forth in Toronto and elsewhere.

I remind you that these people have literally hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and that many of those dollars are spent in support of anal, promiscuity, and, de facto, effeminacy.

Which has a DIRECT impact on your life.

If you want to fight all the lies coming out of AIDS Inc and ANAL Inc, you need to donate.

Once again, I'm in overwhelm with the level of work.

And there are NO donations.

This battle cannot be fought without money.

DONATE.

or DIE.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.