Condom-mania has been sweeping the country for the last year. One can hardly turn on television, read a newspaper, or participate in a school curriculum discussion without being battered with the demand that people and pupils be encouraged to use condoms, be taught how to use them, and have them as readily available as the nearest restroom.
Now, this massive marketing campaign is being chilled by the cold air of truth. Articles in the New York Times and Newsweek, no less, quote authority after authority as warning that, contrary to the advertising promises, condoms are not the key to safe sex, after all.
It is unclear exactly what has triggered these reversals. The quality of the condoms is no different from what it was a year ago. Perhaps it is a sudden awakening to the fear of product liability or malpractice lawsuits that could arise from the demonstrably false assurances made in behalf of a commercial item used in risky behavior.
“The safe sex message just isn’t true,” now says Dr. Bruce Voeller, who is conducting research on the effectiveness and durability of condoms. He heads the Mariposa Research Foundation, which specializes in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.
“You just can’t tell people it’s all right to do whatever you want as long as you wear a condom,” says Dr. Harold Jaffe, Chief AIDS epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control. “It’s too dangerous a disease to do that.”
Both these statements are 100% contrary to the prevailing message over the last year given by media, news and talk programs, television ads, and Planned Parenthood-style sex education curriculum.
“Condoms: Experts Fear False Sense of Security” now proclaims the New York Times. This article quotes health officials as articulating their worry that the current campaign to promote condom use to curb the spread of AIDS is “creating a false sense of security” among people who continue to engage in risky behavior. “We cannot tell people how much protection condoms give,” now says Dr. Malcolm Potts, a contraceptive inventor and president of Family Health International, a contraceptive research group in North Carolina. Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan, director of the Human Sexuality Program at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, now says that the publicity blitz promoting condoms has offered false assurances because condoms don’t make sex safe at all; they merely reduce the risk of AIDS transmission. She warns that any open sore, even a hangnail, could be an entry port for the virus. It now appears that the condom-mania campaign swept the country without any factual data on how much protection condoms provide. The New York Times admits that “there have been virtually no scientific studies of the devices’ efficacy, especially with regard to AIDS transmission.” Condoms have blocked the AIDS virus in laboratory studies, but there is no scientific evidence that they do so during intercourse. Newsweek states the growing concern that condom protection “has been exaggerated.”
The promoters of condoms have overstated the amount of protection they provide, now says Dr. Marcus Conant, chairman of the Task Force on AIDS for the California Department of Health. He adds that condoms could be even less efficient in preventing the spread of AIDS than in preventing pregnancy.
A variety of studies have shown that condoms fail to prevent pregnancy in 10 percent of couples who rely on that method. But the risk of transmitting the AIDS virus is much higher than the risk of pregnancy because (1) the AIDS virus is many times smaller than human sperm, and (2) a woman is fertile only several days a month, whereas the AIDS virus is virulent 365 days a year.
A University of Miami study of AIDS patients who regularly used condoms showed that 2 out of 12 uninfected heterosexual partners became infected. The CDC is planning new studies, but Dr. Jaffe says that unambiguous answers may never be available.
The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates prophylactics as medical devices, has only given manufacturers and distributors permission to advertise that condoms may “prevent” the spread of sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS. The FDA recently required three leading manufacturers to recall 100,000 condoms because a spot check found that too many of them leaked.
According to the CDC, 40,000 cases of AIDS in the United States have been reported. Nine out of 10 have been homosexual men or intravenous drug users. One and a half million Americans are infected with the AIDS virus, all of whom can transmit it through exchanges of blood or during sexual intercourse.
