I agree, of course. Ugandan girls are married, on average, when American girls are still in junior high or high school. And in the US, the number of people dying of AIDs in front of our very eyes is infinitely smaller, so simple dread fear isn't so great a deterrent to promiscuity. I know, personally, no one in the town in which I live who has died of AIDS. In a Ugandan village, everyone had neighbors who had died or were dying of the disease.
I was also struck by yet another instance of political correctness determining what facts get taken into account in the making of policy decisions.
"... while it is difficult to separate political differences from scientific ones, both Green and Stoneburner complain of difficulty publishing studies that point to the importance of fidelity and abstinence. In 1998 Green wrote an article about the apparent success of what he calls "primary behavior change"--more abstinence and fewer partners, as opposed to condom use and STD treatment--in slowing HIV transmission in the Dominican Republic, only to have it turned down by four academic journals..."
Hurried edit: Also, in the matter of a comparison between Uganda and a first world country, no mention was made in the discussion of the failure rate of condoms of the fact that Ugandans would, I am certain, being very poor, be using a condom more than once, maybe more than a few times, maybe until it broke.... |
