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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

I speculate it would do more harm than good. Safe sex practices are important even if you have a means of lowering the risk of HIV.

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Isn't this the same line of reasoning that the Catholic church uses to try to prevent the spread of condoms in certain parts of the World?

Do your research. At least three different companies produce and distribute a Vatican-approved condom under license. Its innovative latex-derivative material has been engineered under Church supervision to block the HIV virus while allowing sperm to pass unhindered.

UPDATE: Folks this is indeed one of the oldest jokes ever told. I’m not surprised nobody is laughing, my ability to tell a joke it matched only by my ability to compose rhyming couplets extemporaneously. But I am surprised nobody identified it as such.

> Its innovative latex-derivative material has been engineered under Church supervision to block the HIV virus while allowing sperm to pass unhindered.

This is either a joke or the stupidest thing I've heard all month.

Anyway, the RCC does allow people to use condoms when the primary purpose is disease control and not contraception.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8148899/Po...

This is either a joke or the stupidest thing I've heard all month.

Alas, this was a joke AND the stupidest thing you’ve heard all month. I will be more mindful of Poe’s Law (as suggested elsewhere) in the future.

You have my attention, but all I have is contrary:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-vatican-reaffirms-...

Do you have a reference?

While I realize that joking around is discouraged here, maybe it would be best if we didn't turn the humor detector all the way off.

I thought it was a hoot, anyway.

The problem is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law. It's hard to get far enough beyond the actual nutjobs that we can tell you aren't one.

raganwald is usually pretty good about it [edit: meaning, of course, that I usually enjoy his posts], but this one was so close to the edge because of all the controversy last year that I thought I may have missed something.

My research overwhelmingly points to you being wrong. If you can provide some supporting references, I am happy to be corrected.

Subtle humor about the Vatican is just... not enough, in this day and age:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEn0px0uJZQ

DISCLAIMER: despite being both clever and serious, this link is very NSFW.

In answer to your query: Yes. It is the same logic the Catholic church uses to oppose the spread of traditional latex condoms, particularly in Africa.

Yes, but they don't require the same answer.

It's certainly possible that, when condoms are made widely available in a region, this will result in more people having sex. Likely, even. The Vatican's position is that this increase in people having sex outweighs the lower average chance of transmission.

This is empirically false. But it needn't be inherently. Suppose you offered people some other form of protection that decreased the chance of transmission of HIV by 90%, and for some reason in response to this people widely abandoned the use of the condom. This would increase the overall prevalence of HIV by a wide margin.

Take a model where this device decreases the chance of transmission of HIV by 0%, while making some decent sized chunk of people more likely to have unprotected sex because of a false sense of security.* In that case, passing this out at night clubs would likely significant increase HIV's prevalence.

I see a definite use for it, but more in the way of buying a 4 pack every year and not having to go to a clinic.

*I think this model is likely correct, given what we know about the epidemiology of HIV.

It's a risk. But the same could be said for condoms in nightclubs.

Generally, the best public safety campaigns work are "defense in depth". You discourage sex in general, discourage unsafe sex, discourage casual sex, discourage polygamy, provide condoms, and encourage tests. It all generally works, as long as you don't treat any of it as a magic bullet.

It's the extremists who either think a) abstinence is the only protection; or b) causal sex is fine as long as you take precautions; who cause problems, as they tend to discourage defense in depth.

So ideally, they would have an ambiguously enthusiastic "Over 90% accurate!" blurb, and be packaged with a condom or two.

"causal sex is fine as long as you take precautions" is an "extremist" view?

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