I, like many who’ve written to me, am speechless with rage at the Pope’s first direct pronoucement on condoms. (Well, not quite speechless. I had a little vent about it in today’s Times.) To oppose condoms on dogmatic grounds is one thing. That’s the Pope’s job, if he considers it his job to defend Catholic dogma more vigorously than defending the life of young adults.

But the Pope didn’t oppose the use of condoms because Catholic dogma says it’s bad to have sex without making babies. He said we shouldn’t give out condoms in Africa because condom distribution actually makes the HIV epidemic worse. If he’s setting himself up as an epidemiologist, he’s got a bit of work to do. It’s true that in some cases, condom use is highest in communities where HIV is also high. But Rule Number 1 of epidemiology: correlation does not equal causation.

Think of all the miserable sinners who rush (back?) to the bosom of the Catholic Church at the end of a happily dissolute life, just in time for a celibate man in a dress to give extreme unction. In an instant, our sins are absolved, though the pleasure occasioned by all that babyless sex may stand rich in our memory. I haven’t run the numbers on death-bed conversions, but it seems likely that there is a strong correlation between becoming a Catholic and imminent death. By the Pope’s logic, Catholicism kills.

*UPDATE* : The Daily Mash clarifies what the Pope actually meant.
Thanks to Anita Fenton for the enlightening tip.

Researchers looking at data from a large group of American servicemen have found that a genetic mutation which made people of African descent less susceptible to a now-extinct form of malaria also makes them more likely to contract HIV. That’s the bad news. The good news is that African-Americans with the mutation survive longer with HIV if they do get infected.

The paper is very dense, full of sentences like this:

“As there is extensive linkage desequilibrium around the DARC locus, we cannot exclude with certainty the possibility that the effects ascribed to the -46C/C genotype might be attributable to some other polymorphism(s)/genes in the LD near DARC”

But it’s been magicked into comprehensibility by Nicholas Wade, writing in the New York Times. Wade’s account of the research, a model of clear science writing, translates the DARCS and -46C/Cs into passages like this:

“The Texas-London research team is not certain how lack of the receptor promotes H.I.V. infection, but Dr. Ahuja said the red blood cells acted like a sponge for CCL5. Because CCL5 is known to obstruct multiplication of the virus, having lots of the hormone in the bloodstream may prevent infection. Conversely, people whose blood cannot soak up the hormone could be more vulnerable.”

While the people whose blood contributed to the study were all Americans, the paper suggests that the genetic modification is likely to occur also in the African populations with whom the African-Americans share ancestors. And it may explain some of the high HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. Of course HIV is distributed unevenly throughout the continent and even within particular countries; it would be interesting to map the distribution of the genetic variation.

Here’s some of what I say: Over three decades of fertility and sexual behaviour surveys have recorded distinct differences in patterns of sexual networking around the world. Broadly, men and women in parts of sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to have a small number of steady partners at any one time; in other regions, people often have a lot more partners over a life time, but usually just one at a time (sex in nets versus sex in strings, I call it). HIV spreads more efficiently through sex in nets, and that in large part explains why two thirds of people with HIV live in Africa.

Those are facts. Not opinion, certainly not an expression of any judgement about the inherent superiority of any behaviour or moral code. But some people have suggested that simply stating those facts plays into the hands of people who believe that sex is bad and more sex is worse, and who use that judgement to light bonfires of hatred upon which whole races get burned. One such person is ZSUZSANNA, of the Faithful World Baptist Church (Doctrinal statement: “We believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty”.)

“I would link to her blog to prove I am telling the truth, but I won’t because I thought the woman was inappropriate, vulgar, and a psycho.” says ZSUZSANNA of a stranger who had the audacity to conceive a child by in-vitro fertilisation. I feel exactly the same way about ZSUZSANNA, but I will link to her vitriolic blog, so that you can see I’m not making it up. Choice quote:

Maybe instead of handing out condoms like candy, these people should be taught not to live like animals and sleep with everyone and everything that moves. Statistics have proven over and over that distributing condoms RAISES the incidence of STDs. This is due to the fact that people will fornicate more because they feel safe…

Let’s leave aside this good Christian soul’s inability to interpret data (one she shares with a Bush-appointed former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennet.) How many of “these people” has she spoken to? Is she prepared to write off the millions of chuch-goers of Africa as “animals” just because of differences in the way sexual partnerships are structured?

In addressing HIV, I still believe it important to state the facts and address them appropriately. But if anything I say reinforces this kind of blind prejudice, I would be sincerely sorry.

I was alerted to this rant by Lazygal.

The Institute for Democracy in South Africa has recently published a massive tome, The Political Cost of AIDS in Africa which “reveals that the fledgling multi-party democracies in parts of the continent are being undermined by sickness, incapacity and premature deaths among elected leaders as well as within the electorate”. Well, well. Who’d have thought it?

By definition, when over one in four voters is infected with a fatal disease that kills prematurely, voters will be dying prematurely. Since testing negative for that fatal disease is not a condition of office, it seems inevitable that some of the people dying are also politicians (the study points out that HIV is never acknowledged as the cause of death for a politician, but then most non-politicians with HIV in southern Africa are not exactly trumpeting their HIV status, either). If dead voters undermine democracy, as the study suggests, then yes, HIV will undermine democracy in southern Africa. HIV won’t undermine democracy as much as the acts of some of the region’s elected luminaries, such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, of course, but hey ho…

Now reverse the question. Not “how does HIV make for bad politics?”, but “how have bad politicians made HIV?”. What is really shocking in southern Africa is that political leaders, starting with South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, have fanned the flames of HIV with their denial, their prudishness and their lies. And those of the voters that are still alive have, for the most part, allowed them to do it. In other words, voters are getting leaders that reflect their own views. That’s democracy.