Mbeki's refusal to recognize the true causes of the HIV pandemic has condemned millions, literally, millions, to die. Very late, he is preparing to provide anti-retrovirals to select groups in the community, but he's doing it unwillingly, and recently said that he'd never personally known anyone who'd died of AIDS.
The Vatican's monstrous (imo) campaign against condom use will, similarly, condemn millions to death. I note that they are discouraging condom use for AIDS prevention on "four continents," not including, clearly, North America and, I assume western Europe. They're telling Latin Americans, Africans, Asians and (I'm guessing), eastern Europeans (Poland maybe? Czechoslovakia?), not to use them.
I'm speculating they have been advised that it would be extremely bad PR for the Catholic Church in the U.S. to try to get people with AIDS, or at AIDS risk, to stop using condoms, and they've have had rather a lot of bad PR recently. |
