Anti-AIDS committee slams “stubbornness” against abstinence at world conference

Madrid, Spain, Jul 18, 2004 / 22:00 pm

In a statement made public this weekend, the Independent Anti-AIDS Committee of Spain lamented the “stubbornness” against abstinence and faithfulness shown by leaders at the recent World AIDS Conference in Jakarta.

According to the statement, “The novelty of this conference was that the US and Uganda brought up two subjects that are taboo—abstinence and fidelity, and the positive results of their application.  They should be congratulated.”

“Some have hypocritically torn their garments” in protest against these ideas, the statement indicates, and it proposes three questions to evaluate the true struggle against the disease which threatens to reduce the life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa to 32 years:

• What helps in the fight against AIDS, abstinence or promiscuity?
• What helps and what hiders the fight against AIDS, fidelity or polygamy?
• Why the problem in recognizing the evidence?

“There seems to be a stubbornness similar to that of the smoker who wants campaigns against lung cancer which won’t keep him for continuing to smoke,” the Committee writes, recalling that in Spain, “the current ‘prevention campaign’ against AIDS compares the HIV virus to a computer ‘virus,’ leading us to draw the natural conclusion regarding protection: use Anti-virus software and use condoms.”

According to the statement, “It is true that a computer virus can infect anyone, but not so with HIV.  If you are not a drug addict, if you are not unfaithful or a polygamist, there are no risks.  If nobody in your family is infected, there is nothing to worry about.”

“The biggest failure of the campaign,” the Committee adds, “is the attempt to subliminally make us believe that the use of computers is just as common and trivial today as the changing of partners.  Perhaps for some that is the case, and it seems those are values that are going to be forced upon us, but it is not so for many people.”

Clarifications

The Independent Anti-AIDS Committee of Spain underscored that there are “clear differences between the two ‘viruses.’  A computer virus is not a biological agent like the AIDS virus.  The use of computer technologies is something wonderful, a sign of progress, while deceiving one’s spouse is a sign of decline.”

“The only valid comparison is that a computer virus is created and spread by malicious individuals, and the AIDS virus is spread by malicious and stupid individuals who facilitate and provide a host of ways to pass it,” concludes the statement.