I’m an infectious-diseases physician and an AIDS doctor to the poor. Passing out condoms to teenagers is like issuing them squirt guns for a four-alarm blaze. Condoms just dont hack it. We should stop kidding ourselves.
Nobody these days lobbies for abstinence, virginity or single lifetime sexual partners. That would be boring.
Abstinence and sexual intercourse with one mutually faithful uninfected partner are the only totally effective prevention strategies. That is from another recently published government report.
That prim little old lady on TV had it right. Unmarried people shouldn’t be having sex. Few people have the courage to say this publicly. In the context of our culture, they sound like cranks. Doctors can’t fix most of the things you can catch out there. Theres no cure for AIDS. There’s no cure for herpes or genital warts. Gonorrhea and chlamydial infection can ruin your chances of ever getting pregnant and can harm your baby if you do. That afternoon in the motel may leave you with an infection that youll have to explain to your spouse. Your doctor cant cover up for you. Your spouses lawyer may sue him if he tries. There is no safe sex. Condoms aren’t going to make a dent in the sexual epidemics that we are facing. If the condom breaks, you may die.
Dr. Robert C. Noble,
professor of medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY. ~Newsweek, April 1, 1991