We might suppose that condom promotion has two effects: a replacement effect and an encouragement effect. So there will be instances where what would have been unsafe sex at all becomes safe sex, and some instances where no sex at all becomes safe sex. Safe sex is so vastly less likely to transmit HIV that the latter effect would have to be hundreds of times larger than the former for condom promotion to have an overall increasing effect on HIV transmission; that doesn’t seem plausible to me and no evidence to support it has been presented.
If you could show that condom promotion caused a lot of instances where no sex becomes unsafe sex that would change the picture, but AFAIK there’s no reason or evidence to suppose that.
It’s pretty clear in this instance that the desire to bash the Pope-criticising liberals came first, and the arguments second.
We might suppose that condom promotion has two effects: a replacement effect and an encouragement effect. So there will be instances where what would have been unsafe sex at all becomes safe sex, and some instances where no sex at all becomes safe sex. Safe sex is so vastly less likely to transmit HIV that the latter effect would have to be hundreds of times larger than the former for condom promotion to have an overall increasing effect on HIV transmission; that doesn’t seem plausible to me and no evidence to support it has been presented.
If you could show that condom promotion caused a lot of instances where no sex becomes unsafe sex that would change the picture, but AFAIK there’s no reason or evidence to suppose that.
It’s pretty clear in this instance that the desire to bash the Pope-criticising liberals came first, and the arguments second.