Do your research. At least three different companies produce and distribute a Vatican-approved condom under license. Its innovative latex-derivative material has been engineered under Church supervision to block the HIV virus while allowing sperm to pass unhindered.
UPDATE: Folks this is indeed one of the oldest jokes ever told. I’m not surprised nobody is laughing, my ability to tell a joke it matched only by my ability to compose rhyming couplets extemporaneously. But I am surprised nobody identified it as such.
raganwald is usually pretty good about it [edit: meaning, of course, that I usually enjoy his posts], but this one was so close to the edge because of all the controversy last year that I thought I may have missed something.
> Its innovative latex-derivative material has been engineered under Church supervision to block the HIV virus while allowing sperm to pass unhindered.
This is either a joke or the stupidest thing I've heard all month.
Anyway, the RCC does allow people to use condoms when the primary purpose is disease control and not contraception.
It's certainly possible that, when condoms are made widely available in a region, this will result in more people having sex. Likely, even. The Vatican's position is that this increase in people having sex outweighs the lower average chance of transmission.
This is empirically false. But it needn't be inherently. Suppose you offered people some other form of protection that decreased the chance of transmission of HIV by 90%, and for some reason in response to this people widely abandoned the use of the condom. This would increase the overall prevalence of HIV by a wide margin.
Take a model where this device decreases the chance of transmission of HIV by 0%, while making some decent sized chunk of people more likely to have unprotected sex because of a false sense of security.* In that case, passing this out at night clubs would likely significant increase HIV's prevalence.
I see a definite use for it, but more in the way of buying a 4 pack every year and not having to go to a clinic.
*I think this model is likely correct, given what we know about the epidemiology of HIV.
