After further discussion of the so-far and likely to be fruitless search for a vaccine, Horton considers an alternative:

And yet the notion of a vaccine has not been entirely forgotten. A new kind of vaccine has been proposed, one that many observers believe has had a profound effect in a country long threatened by HIV. In describing how Uganda responded to AIDS in the 1980s, President Yoweri Museveni argued that "with no medical vaccine in sight, behavioral change had to be our social vaccine and this was within our modest means." He gave this comparison:

Individual behavior and personal responsibility, based on knowledge, will be our best protection against AIDS and other future epidemics. In Uganda we managed to bring the HIV sero-prevalence from 18.6 percent to 6.1 percent using just a social vaccine, a reduction close to 70 percent.... I am told by the medical scientists that a medical vaccine with 80 percent efficacy is considered a very good vaccine.

Of course most of the men on this site understand the concept of a social vaccine very well, because most of us are HIV negative due to "behavioral change."

I've read interviews with President Museveni where he says that when he first heard of AIDS, he was concerned that it was transmitted by mosquitoes or protozoans or mites -- parasites and pests which in Sub Saharan Africa are very difficult to control.

But when he learned that HIV was transmitted through sex, he says, "I thought, this isn't so bad. We can easily do something about that."

Of course Museveni is right.

HIV is a difficult pathogen to acquire; it's an easy pathogen to avoid.

Particularly among "men who have sex with men" -- MSM.

For among MSM, HIV is almost universally transmitted through anal penetration.

Indeed, most of the really serious MSM STDs are anally and/or orally vectored.

So they're easy to avoid.

Especially because there's a super hot, very low risk, and very male alternative: FROT.

And yet, as Horton goes on to discuss, there's a lot of opposition among the safer-sex boyz to the idea of a social vaccine.

Why?

Perhaps because it would put them out of a job.

For example, they say that while a "social vaccine" may have worked in Uganda, it won't in areas where women have less control over their sex lives.

But Museveni went to great lengths to strengthen the role of Ugandan women in opting whether to have sex.

And the idea that a powerless woman will be able to convince her essentially rapist male partner to use a condom -- is laughable.

Yet that's the objection the condom campaigners raise in Southern Africa -- women are too weak, so men must use condoms.

What's important to understand is that a similar and very colonial attitude prevails among AIDS prevention "experts" in the US.

Gay men are too irresponsible and too driven by lust, they tell us, to reduce their number of partners or give up anal; the best we can do is give them condoms.

Yet, as I've discussed in a number of articles, including Do Condoms Work? and Why Be Faithful?, there's abundant evidence that condoms actually increase irresponsibility and promiscuity among MSM: that they disinhibit, making gay men less choosy about their partners, more likely to have many partners, and of course most likely to do anal -- the single most dangerous vector for MSM HIV.

In addition, of course, we know that even properly used -- and it takes six separate steps to put a condom on an erect penis -- there's slippage, breakage, and leakage about 1.6% of the time.

Doesn't sound like much, does it?

Until you consider the concepts of cumulative efficacy and cumulative risk.

Because over time -- that is, cumulatively -- the risk rises.

For example, if you use a condom ten times, the cumulative breakage rate and with it risk rises to 10 X 1.6% or 16%.

Translation: the more you uses condoms, the more likely it becomes that the condom will fail, or will be used improperly, or not at all.

That's the truth about condoms, and in all the furor over barebacking, what we've lost sight of is the likelihood that many men who are sometimes "safe" and sometimes not are being infected even when they think they're being "safe."

So: these objections to the MSM social vaccines of avoiding anal, choosing Frot, and being Faithful, ones which we know work full time and all the time, are pure silliness.

But deadly.

As Charles points out in the post on this board titled ULTIMATE FRUSTRATION, the adamant refusal of AIDS Inc to consider a social vaccine like Frot leads daily to HIV infection and a subsequent lifetime of misery for those hapless gay and bi men taken in by the self-serving lies of the "safer-sex" establishment.

Guys, we have an AIDS vaccine -- and it's not elusive.

It's a social vaccine, it's called Fidelity and Frot, and it works.

And were just a tiny -- and I do mean tiny -- percentage of the tens of millions of dollars now being wasted on MSM condom campaigns diverted to the promotion of Fidelity and Frot, HIV prevalence among MSM would swiftly tumble and fall.

Remember that warrior dudes, and remember that