SAFER SEX PERILS

The perils of safer sex
The London Free Press, September 15, 2000
By Rory Leishman

The Journal of the Canadian Medical Association made headlines last week with a report that one in five Canadian women aged 19 to 24 is now infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV) -- an incurable sexually transmitted disease that is the leading cause of cervical cancer.

What has gone wrong? For more than 20 years, young Canadians have been relentlessly exposed to the most explicit sex education in the public schools, yet rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and venereal disease are higher than ever.

The explanation is simple and incontrovertible. Instead of inculcating the principles of sound sexual morality in young students, public health agencies and the schools have been fostering the illusion of safer sexual promiscuity through contraception.

In a pamphlet entitled, It's Your Health -- Condoms, Health Canada advises that, "Although no form of protection is 100 per cent safe, the proper and consistent use of condoms can significantly reduce the risk of unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS." Having said that, the pamphlet asserts: "The condom that works is the one you use - every time!"

Such claims are dangerous, false and misleading. They are imperilling the lives of millions of Canadians.

Nowhere in Health Canada's condom pamphlet is there any mention of HPV. That's a reckless omission. In another pamphlet entitled, What Everyone Should Know About Human Papillomavirus (HPV), Health Canada reports that HPV, "is now estimated to be the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States."

There is no known cure for HPV. Men who contract the infection are liable to come down with ugly, itchy and painful genital warts. In women, HPV can also, "slowly progress to cervical cancer," reports Health Canada. "Studies show that in cases of women with cervical cancer, over 90 per cent test positive for HPV."

On the prevention of HPV, Health Canada equivocates: "condoms do not provide absolute protection because HPV is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, and the virus is small enough to pass through a condom." In a research report posted on the Health Canada website, Professors Alice Litwyn of the University of Toronto and John Sellors of McMaster University are more candid. They explicitly warn: "Barrier contraceptives, which have been successful in reducing transmission of many sexually transmitted diseases, do not appear to be effective in preventing HPV infection."

HPV is insidious. In the early stages, there is often no evidence of infection. A man might use unbreakable condoms 100 per cent of the time, yet still contract HPV and unknowingly pass it along to all of his sexual partners.

Health Canada and the public schools should stop the cover-up on HPV. They should start a massive campaign to inform young Canadians that there is no reason to believe that condoms can protect anyone against HPV -- one of the most common and carcinogenic of sexually transmitted infections.

In an article in the British medical journal, The Lancet, on January 29, Prof. John Richens points to a larger failure of safer sex propaganda: "It is hard to show," he says, "that condom promotion has had any effect on HIV epidemics."

That's stunning. Why has the world-wide promotion of condoms had no demonstrable impact on reducing rates of HIV infection? One key factor, opines Richens, "is a risk-compensation mechanism: increased condom use could reflect decisions of individuals to switch from inherently safer strategies of partner selection or fewer partners to the riskier strategy of developing or maintaining higher rates of partner change plus reliance on condoms."

Health Canada and public school officials should take note: Their obsessive promotion of condoms could serve mainly to increase risky sexual behaviour that results in more disease and death from sexually transmitted infections.

Pope Paul VI warned in his prescient, 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that artificial means of birth control denigrate women and promote death-dealing sexual promiscuity. Time and experience are proving him right.

To protect our young people from potentially lethal sexually transmitted diseases, parents, teachers and clerics should concentrate on telling the truth: Sexual intercourse outside of marriage is reckless, perilous and wrong.

Rory Leishman
836 Wellington St.,
London, Ontario,
Canada N6A 3S7
Phone: 519-439-2676 Fax: 519-439-9008
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