Horace Heffner writes: > No, I made my point. You are attemtping to change the discussion to avoid > the point. Condums are not safe. They break. They have defect rates. It > is reckless to call them safe.
All technology is risky. Cars have defects and they break too, and people drive cars much more often than they have sex, but we are not all of us killed in car accidents. The accident rate is very low, so there is little chance you will be killed in a car. The accident rate for condoms is also very low, especially when they include virucides. An ordinary person can go to prostitutes in Japan 50 times a year for 20 years without any significant risk of a condom failure. For one thing, even when they fail you still have a good chance of avoiding disease. This is analogous to saying that even when a car skids goes out of control, you still have a chance of recovering without an accident. > The failure rate and its effect should be > published information, just like warnings on cigarettes. Warnings are printed on condoms, along with instructions. The failure rate is effectively zero for the Japanese products; all of the problems are caused by user errors. > You can only diminish the spread rate, not reverse it. You can not undo an > AIDS infection. It is true the percentage of the population with the > disease can eventually drop when the infected die off faster than new > infections occur, but still the infection rate upon exposure has to be > dropped to a very low percentage to accomplish that if the exposure rate is > high. As long as people die off faster than new infections occur, the spread rate will decline. >In advanced countries such as Japan where there is treatment and universal >health care, AIDS is not increasing. The number of infections in Japan is >holding steady at 12,000, with fewer than 500 deaths per year. The >onslaught has not only been delayed; it has been ended, mainly by the use >of condoms. > >> Now this is amazing and very interesting, if true. It is difficult to >> believe the use of condoms is the main factor. Why is it difficult to believe? It is only difficult for you, because you refuse to look at the facts. Anyone familiar with STD would not find it at all difficult. > Condoms are just not that > reliable. Oh yes they are. > There must be some other kind of prophylaxis involved. Maybe > there is a natural protection in the Japanese gene pool? No there isn't, and frankly that is a ridiculous suggestion. How could there be? In any case, people in other Asian countries are dying of AIDS by hundreds of thousands. > Maybe the treatment drugs being used prevent the spread of infection? Yes. As I said in a previous message, the drugs reduce the level of viruses in the body so much, sexual partners are much less likely to get the disease. This is true in the U.S. and everywhere people are treated. But poor people in the U.S. and elsewhere are not treated. > Also, the above numbers seem to indicate people with AIDS live about 25 years > in Japan. No one knows how long they will live. > This too is hard > to belive. These numbers are amazing if true. One also has to wonder if > the sex industry in Japan has some kind of influence on the reporting. That is inconceivable! Public health statistics in Japan absolutely reliable, and the overall health care system is the best in the world. The sex industry could no more cover up AIDS than it could cover up murders. > All this info on Japan is the best information you have provided, but is > hard to believe, unless there is some other kind of prophylaxis involved > due to genetics or health care in Japan, possibly similar to the > prophylaxis that can be obtained prenatally. Indeed, health care and education make a huge difference! They teach children about sex and they tell them to use condoms. That's the whole point. When you do that with an entire population, aids does not spread. We do not do that in the U.S. as much, which is why our children are 150 times more likely to get AIDS. Also, prostitutes in Japan have access to health care, so they find out if they have AIDS, and they quit the business. prostitutes in the U.S. and other countries cannot afford doctors. Prenatal prophylaxis is not needed as far as I know. But I am not sure. I know that when the mother gives birth they use AZT to keep the baby from being infected. > >Unfortunately a fifth of our people do not get proper care. > > How does medical care affect the spread rate? There is no cure. Medical care stops the disease from spreading by giving people condoms. That is the only effective method. There is a cure for AIDS nowadays. AIDS is now a very serious, life-threatening chronic condition like diabetes, rather than a death sentence. The cure is very expensive, it does not work with every patient, and no one knows how long it will last. > Prolonging the life of those with AIDS should only increase the rate at > which it spreads. Nope. As I said, the risk to sexual partners is reduced. Also, most patients who know they have the disease will act responsibly, and avoid spreading it, by using condoms and virucides. Together, they make it possible to have a lifetime of sex with very little chance of infection -- or pregnancy, for that matter. > The better the health care the more AIDS is spread by > those infected because they live longer, unless there is some factor more > effective than condoms . . . You are missing the point: the statistic prove that CONDOMS ARE EFFECTIVE ENOUGH. You are begging the question (arguing in a circle). You start off with the assumption that they are not safe, but the statistics show clearly that they are. Virucides help. AZT also helps, but the best defense by far is the condom. Judging by the Japanese stats, the risk of infection is reduced to roughly 100 times greater that the risk of a fatal automobile accident. That's risky, but nowhere near as risky as unprotected sex. > Perhaps those diagnosed in Japan are more responsible than people in the US? I wouldn't blame the patients for the disease -- or the cure. It is the medical system and the government that is more responsible. They have first world health care, and we have third world health care even worse than Cuba's. What would you expect? People die from every cause in the U.S. at a much higher rate than in Japan or any European country. When you refuse to treat people, or take x-rays, provide basic medicine, or give mothers prenatal care, obviously you end up with a population afflicted by chronic and dangerous health problems, heart attacks and so on. Also, we eat far too much, and the quality of the food is dreadful. > This is a competely different thing! What a bogus argument! The 98 > percent vaccine effectiveness refers to individuals, not to exposures! I do not understand your point. People do not get diseases unless they are exposed to them. In a population of people inoculated against measles, 2% will get the disease anyway. > There is a colossal difference! So, at worst case, you wipe out the 2 > percent of the population for which the vaccine is not effective and that's > not so big a deal. Well, measles does not kill often. But the infection does not stop after 2% of the population gets it. There is always new population. The turnover is about 2% per year. So 2% of the new population (children) continue to get measles every year, year after year, for as long as the virus survives. AIDS works the same way. Every year there are a million new young adults, and some are promiscuous. The measles vaccine is adminstered once (or 3 times, actually) and condoms have to administered every time promiscuous people have dangerous sex. But even a libertine would only do a few thousand times in his life, and the failure rate of condoms is so low the chances of getting aids in those few thousand times is practically nil. In Japan, that is. If you go to a country where nearly all prostitutes are infected, then the chances are much higher, obviously. > This differs totaly from a case where two percent of > the *exposures* result in infection . . . That's impossible. The device failure rate is not 2%. The stats quoted earlier were for contraceptive failure over one year. That is a completely different number. I am not sure what that number is -- number of couples using condoms who experience failure, or the number who become pregnant, or what. But anyway, people do not have dangerous sex with prostitutes anywhere near as often as couples have sex which might lead to pregnancy. And the number of people who engage in risky sex is much smaller than the number who are married normally. Also, any healthy woman can get pregnant when a condom fails, whereas only a tiny number of prostitutes in Japan can give you AIDS when a condom fails. That 2% (whatever it represents) is probably reduced by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, meaning a libertine can go for a lifetime in Japan without infection. > . . . and where exposure occurs on a regular and frequent basis. Exposure is extremely infrequent, and not very regular for most people. >> People do not have sex because you "suggest" they should, or you reassure >> them it is safe. Nobody "draws them out." > > If you tell people something is safe then they feel free to do it. I promise you: people who risk AIDS do not listen to anyone about anything. They do not follow advice or consider risk. The best you can hope for is that they will use condoms. They do that anyway in Japan. > My point is only that condoms should not be sold as safe - regardless of > the above points, which are irrelevant to what I have said. Condoms are > not safe. They can break. Yes, and airplanes can crash, and cars can explode. But the chances of a Japanese condom breaking in just the wrong time, with the wrong partner, along with a complete failure of the built-in virucide are so small, you need not worry about them. It probably happens no more than 10 times a year in Japan. (And another 140 people are infected because they do not use condoms at all.) Other risks are far higher. 3,000 pedestrians are killed there every year slipping on wet sidewalks. Suppose they let you broadcast your message to Japanese schools, bars and houses of prostitution: "Condoms are not safe! Don't depend on them! Refrain from sex instead!" I know exactly what would happen if you succeeded. The infection rate would increase by a factor of 150, and 22,000 more people a year would die. In other words, Japan would soon be as bad as off as the U.S. is. The disinformation and ignorance you are promoting is killing 44,000 people a year in the U.S. - Jed
