Health reform delay's price in human lives

The Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land stumbled over the heels of the exit polls to argue without foundation that in the mid-term elections, "American voters" demanded the Republicans "repeal ObamaCare."

Land is wrong, as Dan at Bold Faith Type explained:

Edison Research's exit polls - which are used by the Associated Press, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox News - show that a minority of midterm voters (48%) wanted to repeal health care reform, with 31% wanting it to do more and 16% wanting to leave it as is. Furthermore, voters who turned out on Tuesday were more conservative than the country at large. Taking a wider view, a Gallup poll that was in the field last weekend showed that less than ¼ of Americans (23%) think repealing health care should be Congress's top priority after the election.

Inattentive to the polling data, Land appeared to be instead parroting the message of right-wing strategist Richard Viguerie. Both said the voters had decided "to give the Republicans one more chance" to cut the size of government, although the polling data shows that Americans' overarching concern is the economy.

Centers for Disease Control analysis suggests that any further health reform action should take the form of an expansion of benefits. Not repeal. As Reuters reported:

Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.

hey said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.

"Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.

The findings have implications for U.S. healthcare reform efforts. A bill passed in March promises to get health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans who currently lack coverage.

Lack of health insurance kills at a rate of about one American every 12 minutes, Harvard Medical School researchers found.

How many would Southern Baptists like to see sacrificed on the altar of the Land/Viguerie political goals?

Condomonium goes to school in Rome

The Vatican is displeased with Kepler scientific secondary school in Rome's decision Wednesday to install condom vending machines for students. To be in the girls' and boys' toilets, they will sell condoms at half the usual retail price.

They didn't do it just to provoke the Vatican. The London Daily Mail reports:

In a recent survey of 7482 students in Italy by the Ministry of Health on sexual knowledge, 18 per cent admitted regularly having intercourse without using a condom, which officials said had contributed to rises in sexually transmitted diseases.

Other Italian schools and British schools are considering the same action. The British have an additional reason, again from the Daily Mail:

According to he latest figures available from the Italian Ministry of health the teenage pregnancy rate is six per 1000 girls aged between 15 and 19, compared to 26.4 in the United Kingdom - one of the highest in Europe.

Meanwhile, the long and sometimes strident epidemiology/theology debate continues, literally.

Condom faceoff in the Philippines

The Philippines National Press Club has agreed to host the condom debate between Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and Archbishop Ramon Arguelles and Bishop Deogracias Ynigue. The two bishops challenged her after calling for a ban on condom ads and warnings on condom packages. As a condition of her acceptance, Harvard Medical School trained Cabral insisted that the focus of the debate be scientific, not religious beliefs.

This will be interesting, and perhaps so much more so for those who can actually be there.

Facing HIV epidemic, Catholic priests in the Philippines call for ban on condom ads [Update]

President Nereo Odchimar of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) also called for warning labels saying "Condoms may fail to protect from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases."

ABC-CBN News reported:

Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral has come under fire from the CBCP for promoting condoms as part of the battle against HIV-AIDS. The health secretary said the distribution of condoms is part of the health department's 3-pronged approach to combat the spread of HIV in the country.

Data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed a total of 4,400 HIV/AIDS cases from 1984 to December 2009. Since the Philippines started monitoring the disease, the number of cases has gone up from 1 to 4,424 confirmed cases.

. . .

"At the rate we are going, in 3 years, we are going to have more than 30,000 people with HIV/AIDS in the Philippines," the health secretary said.

The CBCP position is in keeping with that of Pope Benedict XVI, albeit not with the conclusions of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga. Specifically regarding epidemiology, the CDC concludes:

Overall, the preponderance of available epidemiologic studies have found that when used consistently and correctly, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV infection and reduce the risk of other STDs.

No, the world leader in matters epidemiological is not recommending a warning label or otherwise somehow supporting CBCP attempts to suppress condom use in the Philippines.

Update

Philippine political figures respond that a ban on condom ads might infringe on freedom of speech. According to INQUIRER.net, Senator Mar Roxas "advised the Catholic church to just prod its followers not to use condoms.

The debate over ads is part of an ongoing furor over contraception in which the bishops earlier called for Cabral's removal from office. They seemed to be especially offended by his Valentine's Day condom distribution effort.

Faith-based, educational condom distribution

The United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ have joined together in support of distribution of condoms and comprehensive sexual education by houses of worship and faith-based education institutions.

Their initiative contradicts recommendations which follow from Pope Benedict XVI's plane-board statement during his visit to Africa that “You can't resolve [AIDS] with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.

The Rev. Michael Schuenemeyer, the UCC’s executive for health and wholeness advocacy, urges a more scientific and compassionate approach to the prevention of HIV. “The availability of condoms as part of a comprehensive approach to HIV prevention sends the right message and more importantly, it saves lives.”

Shuenemeyer said, “The message is rooted in the belief that loving carefully is a moral responsibility. The practice of safer sex behavior is a matter of life and death. People of faith make condoms available because we have chosen life so that we and our children may live.”

The United Church of Christ HIV and AIDS Network (UCAN) speaks directly to a key issue in the raging international debate over condoms and sex education, and is on sound behavioral ground, when it says:

There is no evidence that making condoms available promotes sexual activity. In fact, condoms, when distributed with educational materials and integrated into a broader, more comprehensive prevention package, have been shown to delay sexual debut among those who are not sexually active. Among sexually active youth, HIV prevention education programs have resulted in a reduced number of partners and increased condom use.

UCAN says making them available does provide "opportunities to open conversations that can save lives. In this context, condoms become educational tools."

They are in good faith striving to follow the best available science.

Condoms for the Pope

The 27 March Facebook group is protesting Pope Benedict XVI's condemnation of use of condoms by sending him a few (tens of thousands, even millions).

The group had close to 30,000 members as of this writing. The organizers expect to send 60,000 condoms to the Vatican on Friday. Der Speigel reports:

Similar social networking groups supporting the condom campaign have sprung up elsewhere on Facebook, triggering pledges of participation from across Europe and beyond. Some estimate that deliveries to the pontiff may total 5 million. One Web site calls on people to either send a real condom addressed to "His Holiness" at the Vatican or a photograph of the contraceptive to his email address.

It was founded by Francis Miles, who described the effort in the Italian newspaper La Voce as "a peaceful provocation ... a reaction to the pope's absurd words on condoms."

He went on to say of himself and other members of the group:

. . . none of this group believes that the condom is the "holy hands" to the eradication of HIV from Africa, but there is one thing that has never been emphasized: the Pope's words were not in Africa. The condom is used throughout the world . . . no one should make it possible to convey the message that the condoms do not drastically lower the risk of infection.
Try a thought experiment: There are two large groups of people of both sexes. Each group is half and half not HIV-positive. Members of one group have sex using condoms. The group other does not us condoms. What do you expect?

The ongoing criticism of the Pointiff's condom remarks has made some church officials unhappy. The London Telegraph reports:

Senior Catholics rallied to the Pope's defense this week, with the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, saying the depth of opprobrium directed towards the pontiff had "been prolonged beyond good reason."

What the critics seek, however, is the change of Vatican policy they believe reason requires. Thus the number of protest-participating Facebook groups is multiplying, along with the number of voices raised in disagreement with the Pope's unretracted remarks.

Pope's revised (not corrected) condom remarks

Commonweal tells us the Vatican has brought the written record of the Popes comments on condoms back into line with events.

It did so after spawning an international uproar over the original post-facto editing of the Papal words. The Pope told reporters that distribution of condoms to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic "even aggravates the problems.” The Vatican published an official record which said condoms merely “risked” aggravating the problem.

The rollback to "aggravates" does not nullify The Lancet's suggestion that "the Vatican’s attempts to tweak the Pope’s words, further tampering with the truth, is not the way forward." It underlines the Vatican's credibility problem.

Surviving ink-stained wretches, creatures of newspaper newsrooms, know corrections must be published with attendant apologies, not circumvented. The Vatican has merely made another "tweak," lacking acknowledgment of and repentance for the original error. We all know that if we sweep enough things under the rug, our audience's faith in our integrity will go there as well.

French Catholics want church abortion/contraception policy changed

More than 80% of French Catholics want church policy on abortion/contraception changed, according to a poll published Sunday by France's Le Journal du Dimanche

Conducted by telephone on Thursday and Friday, after Pope Benedict XVI set off a firestorm of protest by denying the usefulness of condoms in preventing AIDS infection, the poll also found that almost half consider Benedict does a bad job defending the values of Catholicism. A separate poll for Le Parisien found that 57 percent had a bad opinion of Benedict.

An after-the-fact rewrite of the Pope's condom comments for the official record did not add to his stature. Although the change did effectively concede that the weight of expert and general public opinion is not with him.

Holy Re-Seeing

Pope Benedict XVI

How did we miss the Vatican's Wednesday condom backtrack? The London Times reported:

On Tuesday he told reporters accompanying him on his trip to Africa that Aids was a “tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. Taken aback by outrage worldwide, the Holy See altered the Pope’s remark yesterday to read that condoms merely “risked” aggravating the problem.

This is not the first time the Vatican has put words in Pope Benedict XVI's mouth. Backtracking followed in 2007 when the pope suggested that Mexican officials who supported legalization of abortion had been excommunicated. Reinterpretations were offered and the final transcript was altered to make it appear that the Pope's comments were general and did not refer to a specific incident.

"Clarification" or apology following some provocation of public anger has become something of a pattern for Pope Benedict XVI, no doubt contributing to the Pope's decline in French public opinion poll numbers.

In this case, Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, found the Papal revisionism hopeful. He said:

The pope has admitted that he is unsure whether condoms can help alleviate the spread of HIV. Where there is doubt there is freedom and Catholics can make up their own minds whether they use condoms or not. . . . We call on the pope to revisit the teaching on condoms with a view to lifting the ban at the earliest possible moment. In his review, he should include experts who are unequivocal that condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV, like UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations around the world.

O'Brien also observed that the Catholic Church required "359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo."

Anti-condom evangelicals had their political way with Bush

Christian evangelicals pushed the Bush administration to an anti-condom position like the one which has called down fire on Pope Benedict XVI's head. They even drove insufficiently anti-condom evangelicals out of the administration. Jamie Kirchick wrote at TNR:

Anne Peterson, an assistant administrator for global health in the U.S. Agency for International Development and an evangelical who had worked with Christian aid groups in Africa, incurred the wrath of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson during a 2004 meeting at his Colorado Springs headquarters. There, Dobson asked Peterson for her position on condoms, to which she replied that they were an essential feature in HIV prevention alongside the encouragement of abstinence and monogamy. Soon after, Focus on the Family issued a paper criticizing her, and she eventually resigned under pressure. Peterson was replaced by Kent Hill, an evangelical Christian activist with neither a medical degree nor public health experience, who is currently the acting administrator of USAID.

Pope aggravates epidemiologist re AIDS

Driven to sarcasm by Pope Benedict XVI's pronouncement that condoms “can even increase the problem” of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani wrote for the London Times:

I've worked with HIV prevention data for more than a decade, and I have found nothing to support this except a claim by William Bennett, a former Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, who once pointed out that condom use was higher in communities with higher HIV prevalence - clear evidence that condoms aggravate the epidemic. Similarly, more people use treated bed nets in Lagos than in London, and Nigeria has far more malaria than the UK - clear evidence that bed nets spread malaria.

She finds "great mystery" in what she sees as the Pope's focus on compassion for HIV victims at the expense of the uninfected, a view "shared by many evangelicals." Instead:

Why can't we also show compassion to uninfected people by helping them to stay that way, using every effective tool at our disposal? That includes abstinence, which works for many Catholic priests and some teenagers. And cutting down the number of people you have sex with. And condoms.

Use condoms to prevent AIDS? The Pope versus the Centers for Disease Control

Regarding the use of latex condoms to prevent Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS):

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking to journalists aboard his flight to Cameroon March 17, said:

One cannot overcome the problem with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem.

The solution can only be a double one: first, a humanization of sexuality, that is, a spiritual human renewal that brings with it a new way of behaving with one another; second, a true friendship even and especially with those who suffer, and a willingness to make personal sacrifices and to be with the suffering. And these are factors that help and that result in real and visible progress.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., said:

Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In addition, consistent and correct use of latex condoms reduces the risk of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including diseases transmitted by genital secretions, and to a lesser degree, genital ulcer diseases. Condom use may reduce the risk for genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV-associated diseases, e.g., genital warts and cervical cancer.

The CDC Web page on this subject included an overview of laboratory studies, medical/scientific theory and epidemiologic data. Regarding epidemiology, the CDC concluded:

Overall, the preponderance of available epidemiologic studies have found that when used consistently and correctly, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV infection and reduce the risk of other STDs.

The Pope offered no laboratory studies, medical/scientific theory or epidemiologic data.