<<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/14/wcond14. xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/14/ixworld.html>>
Cardinal calls for health warnings on condoms By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 14/10/2003) The cardinal in charge of Vatican social policy yesterday called for condoms to carry "health warnings", arguing that they were not effective against the spread of HIV. Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that to treat condoms as reliable was like "playing Russian roulette". He argued that they were not foolproof against pregnancy, nor were they necessarily impermeable to the Aids virus, which was 450 times smaller than a single sperm. The Roman Catholic Church is fundamentally opposed to artificial contraception and argues that abstinence outside marriage is the only way to stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes Aids. "I propose that the ministries of health require the inclusion in condom packages and s and in the apparatus or shelves where they are displayed a warning that the condom is not safe," Cardinal Trujillo said. His comments followed a BBC documentary in which he said the Catholic Church "advises against people infected with HIV wearing contraceptives". He said he was anxious not to mislead people, especially the young, by making them think that something was safe when it had not been proved. "I simply wished to remind the public, sustaining the opinion of a good number of experts, that when the condom is employed as a contraceptive, it is not totally dependable, and that the cases of pregnancy are not rare. In the case of the Aids virus, which is around 450 times smaller than the sperm cell, the condom's latex material obviously gives much less security. "Thus, to talk of condoms as 'safe sex' is a form of Russian roulette." The World Health Organisation branded the cardinal's remarks as "extremely dangerous, at a time when we are faced with a global epidemic which has already killed 20 million people, and where 42 million others are now infected". ------ "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project." - James Madison _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
