Word: condoms
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...PUTTING CONDOM dispensers around college campuses is part of their strategy. But their ready availability all over the Square aside, there is no need for them on this campus. First, the medical evidence is fairly conclusive that if you're not an intravenous drug user or a homosexual, you're very, very unlikely to contract aids. Most students at Harvard are neither...
Researchers at Berkeley found that of women who had more than 100, condom-less sexual contacts over the course of a year with AIDS-infected partners, only one-third contracted the disease. In a longer study the same percentage held up among women who had sex more than 600 times with infected partners. Since 1 percent of random males carry the AIDS bug, a woman thus would have to have 60,000 encounters with different American men to have even a one-third risk of catching the disease...
...spread of AIDS is concerned, then, condoms only are essential for homosexual men engaging in anal intercourse. Even then, they're no panacea. There's a very good reason why before AIDS hit condom use was on the decline as a birth control method: it wasn't a very good one. At a minimum, many studies have shown, condoms do not prevent pregnancy in one out of 10 couples who rely on them for a year. Some estimates go as high as 20 percent...
Much of this may be attributable to misuse of condoms, but such misuse is endemic to them. And the technical problems of condom use are only heightened when used by homosexuals engaging in anal intercourse. The chief AIDS epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control told The New York Times this summer that condoms fail more often during anal than vaginal intercourse because the former is likely to involve "trauma" that may rip or pull off the condom...
THERE ARE still some caveats even if the practitioner of "safe sex" manages to avoid such trauma. Industry and government studies demonstrate that the AIDS virus cannot penetrate latex condoms. Other studies, though, underscore the susceptibility of latex condoms to rapid deterioration when exposed to heat, light or oil-based lubricants. (I know of no studies examining the effects of genuine cowhide on latex.) And earlier this year the Food and Drug Administration ordered three major condom manufacturers to recall 100,000 condoms after spot inspections found many with excessive leaks...