** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **

Excuse me.  When we taught our children not to have sex until they were married, we didn't have 8 year olds with chlamydia, gonorrhea, and STDs in their mouths.  Now, we do.  You may call me closed minded and righteous; go ahead.  Without a clearly defined goal in mind, the message, any message is lost and will fall on deaf ears.  Now, what do we want to happen?  We want to stop the spread of AIDS.  In Africa, AIDS is spread primarily by uncontrolled (yes, I said it, it's true!!) heterosexual activity.  People must get control of themselves and their sexual organs or it won't matter how many condoms they use.  Condoms are not infallible; they break, they fail, and they are more porous in bodily fluids than they are in the water and saline in which they are tested.  There was a study published in the Lancet many years ago where they gave a supply of condoms to one group of prostitutes in Nigeria, I believe; to the other grou p they did not give condoms.  The rate of AIDS transmission in both groups was the same.  They pass out condoms in high schools here; AIDS is spreading among 13-25 year olds faster than any other group.  Just passing out condoms doesn' work.  You must teach the reasons why indiscriminate sex is dangerous: emotionally, mentally and physically.  Besides, there are other STDs that condoms don't protect against.  Chlamydia is too small for condoms to stop.  It too is spreading rapidly and is undetected most of the time.  Our children are having oral sex in droves, thinking it's not real sex and still spreading AIDS and other STDs.  Adults have no self-control and we are demonstrating that lack of control to our children and they are suffering.  Closed-minded...I don't think so.  I'm trying to look out for our kids.  How many children are born with AIDS because of adult indiscriminate sexual activity?  If you think about it...I mean really...how many women get pregnant while using condoms?  Many.  Sperm are much larger than the AIDS virus.  Use your head.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Amakobe, Peter" <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Thursday, September 8, 2005 10:48 am

Subject: Re: SCIENCE & COMMON SENSE VRS. THE MORAL CRUSADE OF GEORGE BUSH

> Your closed minded egotistic righteousness gets my blood boiling.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: VERA R CROWELL [ mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 10:39 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: SCIENCE & COMMON SENSE VRS. THE MORAL CRUSADE OF
> GEORGE BUSH
>
>
> ** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
>
>
>
> It's not a moral crusade, it's that the President understands
> something that
> obviously many people don't...you may get a person to change a
> behavior, for
> a time. If the attitudes underlying the behavior don't change,
> you will be
> right back in the original situation. They are seeing this in the gay
> population here in the US. For a time, they used condoms
> religiously and
> the rate of the spread of AIDS slowed. T he rate is rising again.
> They have
> become complacent and have stopped using condoms as frequently as
> they had
> in the past. Telling people to use condoms is fine; however, as
> long as
> people are having sex before and outside of a monagamous marriage, the
> threat and danger will always be there. We won't even mention IV drug
> use...we did that to ourselves with permissive attitudes towards
> drug use
> and the social acceptance of "getting high." And we wonder why
> our children
> are dying from "huffing" and "dusting."
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
>
>
> From: Aggo Akyea <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>
> Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2005 8:58 pm
>
>
>
> Subject: SCIENCE & COMMON SENSE VRS. THE MORAL CRUSADE OF GEORGE BUSH
>
>
>
>
> < BR>> > ** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
> >
> > THE MISSING CONDOMS
> >
> > The New York Times
> > MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2005
> >
> > Uganda became Africa's leader in fighting AIDS by
> > waging an all-fronts war. In 1991, 15 percent of
> > Uganda's adults were infected with the virus. Ten
> > years later the figure was 5 percent. Ugandan
> > officials achieved this drop by bringing the disease
> > out into the open and encouraging people to protect
> > themselves. President Yoweri Museveni called the fight
> > "a patriotic duty." The government and a network of
> > citizens' groups promoted abstinence, faithfulness and
> > consistent condom use.
> >
> > Now this balanced approach is tilting, and Ugandans
> > will die as a result. The country still prescribes < BR>> > condoms for high-risk groups. But in the last few
> > years, pushed by Washington, it has begun to emphasize
> > abstinence only, for the general population.
> > Washington is moving away from condom advocacy in all
> > its overseas AIDS programs, but Uganda is the only
> > place that this policy has been so fully embraced by
> > the government. Last year at an international AIDS
> > conference, Museveni gave a blistering speech
> > attacking condoms. Meanwhile, his wife, Janet, has
> > been condemning condom use as immoral and has called
> > for a national census of virgins.
> >
> > Billboards that promoted condom use have come down.
> > More than half of Washington's funds for preventing
> > sexual transmission of AIDS now go to groups promoting
> > abstinence only. Among Washington's grantees are
> > groups that argue incorrectly that the AIDS virus can
> > pass right through a condom. While free condoms used
> > to be widely available at clinics in Uganda, in the
> > last y ear they have virtually disappeared, and condoms
> > in stores have tripled in price.
> >
> > The most important development of the past year is the
> > disappearance of free condoms. A year ago, Ugandans
> > began to complain that the Engabu brand made in
> > Germany and China and distributed free by Uganda's
> > health system smelled bad. Uganda sent a batch to
> > Sweden for testing and they were found to have holes.
> > Further widespread testing found that the condoms were
> > actually fine, but by that time the government had so
> > attacked the brand that people will not use them.
> > Thirty million Engabu condoms are sitting in
> > warehouses.
> &gt
;
> > As result only eight million free condoms have been
> > available to Ugandans in the past year, while 80
> > million were needed. The government has no plan to
> > address the shortage. Instead, it has put a new fee on
> > condoms sold in stores, raising a shortage-inflated
> > price further. And it instituted a requirement that
> > condoms undergo new testing after they are received in
> > Uganda. Extra testing is fine, but Uganda has halted
> > all condom distribution for months while it sets up
> > the testing regime. An emergency supply received in
> > April is still sitting in warehouses.
> >
> > Promoting abstinence and faithfulness has been crucial
> > to fighting AIDS in Uganda. But so have free condoms.
> > One of the highest-risk groups is young married women
> > infected by straying husbands. For them, abstinen ce is
> > not an option, and they are already faithful. They
> > need to be able to protect themselves. Abstinence-only
> > teaching does not work in the United States, and there
> > is no reason to think it will work in Uganda.
> >
> > The policy shift in Uganda threatens to undermine the
> > country's success in bringing AIDS into the open.
> > Ugandans felt relatively free to talk about the risks
> > of catching the AIDS virus and to be open about living
> > with AIDS. If condom users are branded as immoral, it
> > will drive the epidemic back underground. No one knows
> > better than the Ugandans that lives are saved when
> > AIDS is treated as a public health challenge, not a
> > moral crusade.
> >
> >
> > http://www.iht.com
> > (c) 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
> >
&

gt; >
> >
> > Aggo Akyea
> > http://www.tribalpages.com/tribes/akyea
> >
> > "Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my
> > baskets,I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling
> them."> WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau ? 1854
> >
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