The Widespread Distribution of Condoms in Africa is in Africans' Best Interests

My opponents main contention is that abstinence and monogamy education fails while condom distribution and education succeeds in decreasing the prevalence of AIDS. I will therefore focus my arguments on this point. I will argue that promoting abstinence and only one sexual partner at a time is a more effective use of limited resources than distributing condoms to the general population. To begin, I would like to clarify that I am not advocating complete removal of condoms from all anti-HIV programs. I am instead advocating that condoms be focused on high-risk groups such as truckers and prostitutes. These groups are extremely unlikely to follow abstinence or monogamy, so the best option for them is condoms. For the general population, however, widespread condom distribution has not been shown to be an effective way to fight AIDS because condoms cause risk compensation. Risk compensation describes how, when people feel that they are safer, they take greater risks more often. This effect is the reason why seat belts have been shown to increase driving deaths[1][4]. This effect[2] helps explain why studies have been unable to detect reductions in AIDS prevalence resulting from general condom distribution and education.[3][5] UNAIDS itself has admitted that "Prevention campaigns relying primarily on the use of condoms have not been responsible for turning around any generalized epidemic."[5] The real-world example of Botswana is also telling. From 1993 to 2001, condom sales tripled from 1 million to 3 million, but the prevalence of AIDS among urban women rose from 27% to 45%.[5] My opponent bases his attack off the supposition that condoms necessarily reduce HIV prevalence. He calls on four sources, but only one of them (#4) is actually about either reducing HIV prevalence in a population or the specific case of Africa. The abstract he gives in #4, however, makes claims which a more recent study[6] directly negates. #4 claims that neither abstinence nor a reduction in sexual partners resulted from abstinence/monogamy education, but my more recent sixth source finds that sexual debut in Uganda has increased and the number of people with multiple partners has decreased. This suggests that abstinence and monogamy education was, in fact, successful in reducing Uganda's AIDS prevalence. (http://www.who.int...) Although the risk of transmission has an effect on the spread of AIDS, the root cause of its prevalence in some areas of Africa is the cultural habit of having concurrent sexual partners.[7] AIDS is especially contagious a few weeks after it's contracted, so having multiple sexual partners during this time enables multiple rapid infections to occur. Because concurrent partners is the primary reason that Africa has a disproportionately large AIDS epidemic, it only makes sense that programs should focus on reducing concurrency. Theory and small-scale studies are useful, but the most essential indicator of the success of abstinence and anti-sexual-concurrency programs is large-scale example. Conveniently, such an example exists in the state of Uganda. Unlike its neighbors, who simply distributed condoms and educated people about AIDS, Uganda embarked on a program to promote abstinence, single partners, and, for specific classes such as truckers and prostitutes, condoms.[8] The success of Uganda in reducing AIDS prevalence shows the validity of this approach. Uganda reduced concurrency among women aged 15 and older from 1989s level of 18.4% to only 2.5% in 2000.[9] Unsurprisingly, the AIDS prevalence rate also dropped from 15% to 5%.[5] Uganda has shown that changing behavior has been the best way to fight AIDS. Instead of fighting the symptom – risky sex – that arises from sexual concurrency, we should focus our efforts on reducing sexual concurrency itself. This focus on behaviors change over condom introduction is tied to the most successful AIDS prevalence reduction program seen so far in Africa. As one research paper states, "It is therefore safe to say that what led to this unique drop in HIV prevalence rates in Uganda was change in behavior."[10] Opponent's sources: Almost all of my opponent's sources were about how effective condoms are at preventing HIV transmission between individual couples, not within populations. [1] http://hivaids.worldconcern.org... [2] http://cherylcline.wordpress.com... [3] http://www.usp.br... [4] http://www.smithsonianmag.com... [5] http://www.examiner.com... [6] www.cwru.edu/med/epidbio/mphp439/Uganda_ABC.pdf [7] http://www.bluebeetle.me... [8] http://www.pepfar.gov... [9] http://www.tnr.com... [10] www.cwru.edu/med/