The fallacy of "safesex".

In a headline-generating article on September 5, the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that close to 24 per cent of Canadian women aged 20 to 24 are now infected with the human papilloma--a virus (HPV). The news came as a shock to many Canadians: they had never heard of HPV and did not know that it is a dangerous and incurable disease that has led to an alarming increase in cervical cancer.

Yet the dangers of HPV have long been known within the medical profession. Dr. Stephen Genuis is an Edmonton gynaecologist who has written articles on teenage sexuality for such leading medical journals as The Lancet. In a brilliant treatise on sex education for teenagers entitled Risky Sex: The Onslaught of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, that was first published in 1991, he pointed out that "the vast majority of patients have no discernible symptoms in the early stages of HPV infection." He warned that there is "at least a 50 per cent chance of transmission with a single sexual encounter with an infected person" and that "condoms do not offer protection for diseases that are transmitted by skin to skin contact such as human papilloma virus and herpes simplex virus, frequently found throughout the genital area in infected individuals. No degree of condom education will curb the transmission of these organisms."

Are most teenagers aware of these facts? Not at all. Despite all the safer-sex propaganda in the public schools, the great majority of young people still do not know that condoms offer no protection against HPV -- a carcinogen that is the most common sexually-transmitted infection in Canada.

Worse, the pro-condom propaganda in the public schools has led many youngsters to believe that condoms can protect them from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that leads to AIDS. That's a dangerous, potentially fatal delusion. On January 29, The Lancet published an article in which Prof. John Richens pointed out that "it is hard to show that condom promotion has had any effect on HIV epidemics."

How can that be? Why has the world-wide promotion of condoms had no demonstrable impact on reducing rates of HIV infection? One key factor, opines Richens, "is a risk-compensation mechanism: increased condom use could reflect decisions of individuals to switch from inherently safer strategies of partner selection or fewer partners to the riskier strategy of developing or maintaining higher rates of partner change plus reliance on condoms."

In other words, there is reason to believe that safer sex propaganda promotes greater sexual promiscuity that results in increased rates of disease and death from sexually-transmitted diseases. Pope Paul VI would not have been surprised by this finding. He warned in his prophetic 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae (On the regulation of births) that the widespread use of contraception would serve to denigrate women and foster an epidemic of sexual promiscuity.

In an address earlier this year at the University of Western Ontario, Peter Kreeft, an eminent professor of philosophy at Boston College, confessed that he did not initially understand the reason for the church's ban on contraception. He explained: "I would say as a Catholic, that since I accept the authority of the Church as well as the Bible, it is clear to me that contraception is wrong. But in 1968, when the Pope came out with that defining encyclical, it was not at all clear to me why it was wrong. But I accepted it. I said, 'Hey, the church knows more than I do, so I hope I can come to learn a little bit about it.' In the ensuing years, and it took a long time, I think I have."

Kreeft, of course, is not alone. More and more Christians, Catholic and Protestant, are finally beginning to understand that the Church has good reason to condemn contraception.

In defiance of the traditional teaching of the Catholic and Protestant churches, the Parliament of Canada adopted a disastrous set of Criminal Code amendments in 1969 that legalized sodomy and abortion together with the advertising and sale of contraceptives. At the time, most church leaders failed to oppose the legislation because they had conformed their thinking to the corrupt pattern of the secular world.

In marked contrast, Pope Paul VI stood firm. While allowing for effective natural family planning, he upheld the traditional teaching of the church against sexual promiscuity, abortion and contraception. Thanks be to God.

Rory Leishman is a free-lance journalist and can be reached at: 836 Wellington St., London, ON, Canada N6A 3S7 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]