Halting the Spread of HIV: Is Confining Sex to Marriage the only Solution?
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[Mods Note: The following three postings are in response to *** Cremins’ posting last week advocating that large scale behavior change and confining sex to marriage are the only lasting solutions to the spread of HIV. Please find the original posting by clicking here: http://eforums.healthdev.org/read/messages?id=4718.]
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Dear all,

Certainly, the smoking lobby has had amazing success at changing behaviour.
But the underlying message was that smoking is dangerous, and the major advocacy breakthrough was in highlighting that passive smoking directly harms others. Illegal drugs are a more complicated issue, but the main rational arguments for prohibition are that a) they are harmful per se, and b) they are addictive, which means harmless use (rather than ab-use) of these drugs is not possible.

Sex is not dangerous or harmful per se, nor does it harm others per se; ie, there is no such thing as "passive sex".

If one tries to suggest the AIDS pandemic is all about extra-marital sex one certainly doesn't understand the problem. Woolly thinking like this conflates two entirely different topics of discussion; one about the spread of a deadly disease and the other about a moral/religious value that not everyone shares.

The "thing that is most needed" in the HIV/AIDS debate is clarity of thought and rationality of argument. This is exactly what UNAIDS is trying to provide, as should we all.

Regards,

Mark E Grindley
mark@hdnet.org

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I will also add that too much consumption of alcoholic drink like is the case with Cameroon is a major factor to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Many ladies are taking to the bars first and drinking more than their systems can take, before taking to bed. At that point the male can take advantage of the woman’s drunken state, thereby contributing to the spread of HIV.

Dr. Bertha Anyizi
Cameroon
b_anyi@yahoo.co.uk

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The AIDS scenario in Africa is a fight of the big businesses…we have giant adverts on condom yet [we still struggle to] stop AIDS.

AIDS can be stopped by abstinence and marriage – no more, no less.
It may sound like a fundamentalist point but it’s the truth.

John Muma Azeh
azehjohnmuma@justice.com