Catholic HIV Guide

posted: 07/02/2011

The Vatican will hold an international conference in May on HIV prevention and care, after all the confusion the Pope caused last year about using condoms for HIV prevention.

The conference findings will help create a guide that the Vatican is preparing on the prevention and care of AIDS patients.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers also announced that they are working on a set of guidelines for Catholic doctors, nurses and others who care for people with HIV.

More information 

Catholic bio-ethics guide for healthcare workers
Rome HIV conference
 

Pope - Use Condoms with HIV

posted: 24/11/2010

The Vatican is now saying Catholics with HIV should use condoms. Trying to end the confusion at the weekend over words in a book of interviews with the pope, his spokesman made clear that using condoms is acceptable, a ‘lesser evil,’ where there was risk of HIV transmission.
 

Across Africa and the world, reaction to the statement showed the division of opinion within the Catholic church. Church conservative hardliners now have a doctrinal dilemma – do they push the pope’s anti-condoms opinions of last year, or what he says now?
 

African Hardliner: no condoms
Matthew Ndagosa, archbishop for the Kaduna diocese in Nigeria, with its huge numbers of Catholics said: "Everybody is misinterpreting the Vatican. People have made up their own minds on this issue and are twisting the words to fit them. Holy father's message was clear – there is no change in policy. The church will continue to believe that the indiscriminate use of condoms encourages promiscuity and aggravates the situation."

African Archbishop: condoms ‘good for prevention’
But Boniface Lele, archbishop for the diocese of Mombasa in Kenya, where 30% of the population is Catholic, said he was pleased: He has been advocating change in church policy on condoms, to the displeasure of the Vatican. "In my diocese, I tell couples that if one or both or them are sick, they should use condoms. For prevention it is good thing."
Gabriel Dolan, an Irish priest who works among the poor in Mombasa, described the church's historic stance on condom use as "an injustice to those in danger" in countries which have a serious AIDS problem. "This news is a relief," he said. "I think it's just the beginning. Once you make a small concession like this it's like taking a brick out of the Berlin Wall."
 

Translation confusion
According to the German original and the English translation of the book, ‘Light of the World’ by journalist Peter Seewald, the pope said the use of a condom by an HIV-positive male prostitute could be a good thing, because it shows responsibility. But some people saw the Italian translation of the pope’s words and read this to mean a female prostitute. Italian nouns have a gender, like French nouns, and the word ‘prostituta’ is a feminine noun, and it is used for both male and female sex workers.
 

Popes comes condom clean
But at a press conference in the Vatican to mark the launch of the book, his spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, explained that he had asked the pope on Sunday.
"I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine," Lombardi said. "He told me 'no'." Lombardi said the key point was: "It's the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship … This is if you're a woman, a man, or a transsexual."
 

As several experts have noted, the book cannot alter doctrine. But Lombardi's comments show that the pope approves of condom use as a lesser evil where there was a risk of HIV transmission.

‘Evil’ condoms
The Catholic ban on the use of condoms, or any thing else for contraception remains. One of the pope's most senior officials, Cardinal Rino Fisichella, told the press conference condoms were "intrinsically an evil".
 

Pope’s words
In Seewald's book, the pope repeats his view that condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection". But, asked whether his church is opposed in principle to their use, he gives a reply that falls well short of a straight answer.
"It of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."
 

Church in confusion
The shift has caught out some of his most senior officials. Asked by the website of the US-based ‘National Catholic Register’ if the pope's statement indicated that in some cases condoms were permissible, Cardinal Raymond Burke replied flatly: "No, it's not."
In the UK, Elena Curti, deputy editor of the Catholic weekly, The Tablet, welcomed the shift, saying: "[The pope] has let the genie out of the bottle. Once you do that it's very difficult to put it back in. In allowing this chink of light in – despite the careful language he uses – it does open up the debate."
 

HIV charities welcome conversion
HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust expressed delight at the pope’s change of view. "It does represent a huge shift in terms of what the Vatican said before," said the trust's communications director, Genevieve Edwards. "His comments are sufficiently broad to allow people to interpret them as they feel they need to."
 

Anti-abortion denial
But John Smeaton, a Catholic and director of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, denied that there had been any policy change. "Pope Benedict, like other Catholics, is bound by the magisterium of the church which he proclaims in Caritas in veritate," he wrote on his blog. "He's not likely to promote a change to that teaching in an interview with a journalist a year later – and he doesn't do so."
 

The popular Catholic blogger, Father Tim Finigan, acknowledged that there had been a shift, but warned: "I must offer a reaction of my own to the holy father's comments on AIDS and condoms. It would be along the lines of Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army: 'Do you think that's wise, sir?' We know that the widespread distribution of condoms to tackle the problem of HIV/AIDS has not worked in practice." [This is plainly wrong – the scientific evidence is very strong that the widespread use of condoms is the most effective way to prevent HIV].
 

adapted from Source

The Pope, HIV and condoms

posted: 13/09/2010

This week the Pope comes to Britain. Our interest is his part in the deaths caused by HIV of 2 million people each year. In May 2005, shortly after taking office, the Pope first talked about HIV, and came out against condoms.

He was addressing bishops from South Africa, where somebody dies of HIV every two minutes: Botswana with 23.9% of adults between 15 and 49 being HIV positive; Swaziland, where 26.1% of adults have HIV; Namibia, 15%; and Lesotho, 23%.
 

He has carried on since: in March 2009, while flying to Cameroon (where 540,000 people have HIV), Pope Benedict XVI explained that HIV is a tragedy "that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

In May 2009, the Congolese bishops conference celebrated with this announcement: "In all truth, the Pope's message which we received with joy has confirmed us in our fight against HIV/Aids. We say no to condoms!"
 

Leading English archbishop joins in
The Pope’s position has been supported, in the past year alone, by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster. "It is quite ridiculous to go on about AIDS in Africa and condoms, and the Catholic Church," says O'Connor. "I talk to priests who say, 'My diocese is flooded with condoms and there is more AIDS because of them."
 

Infected lies and nonsense
Some have been even more imaginative in their messages against condoms. In 2007, Archbishop Francisco Chimoio of Mozambique announced that European condom manufacturers are deliberately infecting condoms with HIV to spread AIDS in Africa. Out of every 8 people in Mozambique, one has HIV.
 

It was Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo of Colombia who most famously claimed that the HIV virus can pass through tiny holes in the rubber of condoms. Again, he was not alone. "The condom is a cork," said Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Spain, "and not always effective."
 

In 2005 Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, explained that scientific research has never proven that condoms "immunise against infection". He's right, they don't. They stop a virus that can kill you from being transmitted during sex.

Condoms stop 80% of HIV infections
How effective are condoms? It's always wise never to overstate a case. The latest systematic Cochrane review of the literature found 14 observational studies. These studies generally looked at HIV transmission in stable heterosexual couples where one partner had HIV. Overall, rates of HIV infection were 80% lower in the partners who reported always using a condom, compared to those who said they never did. 80% is very effective.
 

There is no single perfect solution to the problem of HIV: if things were that easy, HIV wouldn't be killing 2 million people every year. ‘ABC’ is a widely used HIV prevention acronym in Africa: it stands for abstain, be [faithful], [use a] condom.
 

Selecting one of the most effective elements from these three and actively campaigning against it is plainly destructive, just as telling people to abstain doesn't make everyone abstain, and telling people to use condoms won't make everyone use them. But the Pope has proclaimed: "The most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/Aids is the Catholic church and her institutions."
 

This is ludicrous. The pope leads the Catholic church which is the only major influential international political organisation that actively tells people not to do something that plainly works well.
 

It’s fine to preach abstention and being faithful. But deliberately and misleadingly sabotaging the use of condoms which are 80% effective and which prevent an infection that kills 2 million people a year, makes the Pope and the Catholic church a serious global public health problem. 
 

Open Letter from NAT (National AIDS Trust) and FPA  

Source The Guardian Bad Science column (edited)

Community Service for HIV+ Popstar

posted: 26/08/2010

Updated 27 August

The HIV-positive German popstar accused of infecting her former partner was given a two-year suspended sentence and is required to do 300 hours of community service work, if possible working with an organisation that helps people with HIV.
 

Nadja Benaissa, 28, admitted having unprotected sex and not telling her partner she has HIV, as German law requires. The law is different in the UK.
 

The No Angels singer was found guilty of causing bodily harm to one man, and of two cases of attempted bodily harm.
 

Benaissa admitted she had sex with three partners without telling them she has HIV. One of them later tested HIV positive.

Virus evidence unchallenged

The court ruled that she had "in all probability" infected one of her lovers, who contracted HIV at the time of their relationship and that she had endangered the life of another, who remains free of the virus. Similar accusations towards the singer made by a third former lover, which were originally included in evidence, were not heard in order to speed up the trial.

The prosecution evidence given by the expert German virologist, Professor Josef Eberle of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, said there was little doubt that Benaissa had infected the man, because they both had a very similar strain of the virus, a rare form which was first discovered in West Africa.

However this evidence went unchallenged (because she pleaded guilty) and it is notable that the judge only said that 'in all probability' she infected him. In a criminal case in Britain 'in all probability' is not good enough - she has to be proved the source of his infection 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

Having a similar strain of HIV, even if this is rare in Germany, doesn't prove he could not have been infected by someone else with the same strain. Until a few years ago the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain made the same sweeping claims about people who shared the same rare strain of HIV. Then expert virologists for the defence here demonstrated that this proves nothing except that two people have the same strain of HIV. The man could have got that same strain from someone else.   

She could have faced up to 10 years in jail, but prosecutors sought a lenient sentence because she confessed and expressed remorse.
Benaissa was arrested very publicly in Frankfurt last year, shortly before she was due to perform a solo concert, and spent 10 days in custody.
 

Pressures and a hard life 

The five-day trial, which took place in a youth court in Darmstadt as Benaissa was just 16 when the first offences took place, heard detailed evidence of the pop star's troubled youth. Benaissa spent time living on the street, where she developed a drug addiction. She had a child when she was 16.

Stop and Think

For those of us who are quick to say: how could she? I would like to ask a few questions: could you imagine finding out you are pregnant, and that you also have HIV, at 17? Can you imagine the fear that you could possibly infect the baby, and the anxiety that the medications you need to take in order to prevent the transmission may harm you and the baby? Can you imagine fearing for your own future? How would you tell your partner, or your ex, or the person you are hoping to have a relationship with? And what could the consequences be?
 

Source BBC

Update Source The Guardian 
Stop and Think from HIV Policy Speak Up blog
Statement by German HIV organisation Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (in English) on HIV and the Criminal Law
HIV criminalisation blog

Positive Pop Star on Trial

posted: 17/08/2010

The lead singer of Germany's best-selling girl band was in a young people’s court yesterday on charges of failing to tell three male partners she had HIV and of passing on HIV to one of them. She was just 17 when she discovered she was HIV positive and when the alleged offences begun.
 

Nadja Benaissa, 28, of the group No Angels, is accused of having had sex with three partners, a few times each, between 2000 and 2004, without informing them of her HIV status. One of the men got HIV.
 

Arrested before concert in blaze of publicity

Benaissa, who found out she had HIV a decade ago when she tested as part of routine health screening in pregnancy, was arrested in a blaze of publicity in April 2009 just before No Angels were due to appear on stage at a Frankfurt nightclub. She was handcuffed by plainclothes police, driven away in front of fans, then held in custody for 10 days.
 

Campaigners for the rights of people with HIV were highly critical of the public manner in which the arrest was made, calling it a "modern witch-hunt", and have accused prosecutors of a grave breach of privacy after they made public the fact that Benaissa had HIV.
Benaissa's is the first HIV trial in Germany in which a celebrity is in the dock.
 

Doubts about transmission
Giving evidence to the court, the unidentified 34 year old man who claims she infected him said: "We had sex between five and seven times, about three of those were unprotected."
 

Nadja Benaissa, who is accused of grievous bodily harm and attempted aggravated assault, told the court in Darmstadt that she had failed to tell her partners about her condition. The singer, said she had not meant to cause any of the men injury, having been advised that it was highly unlikely that she would transfer the virus to anyone with whom she had sex. "I never wanted this to happen to any one of my partners," she said.
 

In a statement by the singer, read to court by her lawyer, Oliver Wallasch, she added: "I'd been told the likelihood of infecting someone or that I would develop the illness was more or less zero. For that reason I kept the news even from my close group of friends [as] I didn't want my daughter to be stigmatised. I told the band members because I trusted them but I never made it public because I feared that it would mean the end of the band."
 

Wait for the expert scientific evidence

The five-day trial is due to hear from Professor Josef Eberle of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, who is expected to testify that the man may have been infected by someone else.
 

In England and Wales, prosecution guidelines say phylogenetic analysis must be carried out before cases come to court. It is exceptionally difficult now for prosecutors here to prove a HIV transmission case. If this case was in the UK, the prosecutors would have to prove none of the man’s other sexual partners could have given him HIV. We should wait to hear the evidence of the professor.
 

Witnesses in the trial, which has attracted scores of No Angels fans, are expected to include Benaissa's fellow band members, Sandy Mölling, Jessica Wahls, and Lucy Diakovska. A verdict is due on 26 August.
 

Under German law the crime of failing to disclose you have HIV to someone before having sex with them carries a prison sentence of between six months and 10 years.
 

Talking about HIV
Following the publicity about her HIV the singer has often talked publicly about it, including in a prominent speech to the Berlin AIDS Gala last November, in which she said: "I thought my life was destroyed, as well as that of my nine-year old, infection-free daughter."
But she has stressed that thanks to modern medicine "I am a completely healthy person, even if I'm HIV positive. I have a perfectly normal life expectancy."
 

No Angels, an all-girl band with four members, was discovered 10 years ago during a TV talent show when they beat 4,500 other hopefuls for the top prize. They went on to become Germany's most successful female band, often compared to Girls Aloud. Between 2000 and 2003 they sold 5 million records, including three No 1 albums and four No 1 singles, among them their most famous hit, Daylight in Your Eyes. The band broke up but reunited to take part in the Eurovision song contest in 2008, in which they came 23rd. They released a new album last summer.
 

Source