Roland's paper shows electron microscopy photos of natural latex. You can
see the natural holes, or intrinsic flaws. The "inherent defects in
natural rubber range between 5 and 70 microns."

And it's not as if governments don't know. A study by Dr. R.F. Carey of
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that "leakage of HIV-sized
particles through latex condoms was detectable for as many as 29 of 89
condoms tested."

These were brand new, pre-approved condoms. But Roland says a closer
reading of Carey's data actually yields a 78% HIV-leakage rate, and
concludes: "

That the CDC would promote condoms based on [this] study...suggests its
agenda is concerned with something other than public health and welfare."


The federal government's standard tests, he adds, "cannot detect flaws
even 70 times larger than the AIDS virus."

Such tests are "blind to leakage volumes less tha one microliter - yet
this quantity of fluid from an AIDS-infected individual has been found to
contain as many as 100,000 HIV particles."

PANACEA OR PLACEBO?

In conclusion, Herbert Ratner, M.D., offers the best summary of all when
he says,
Actually, the major accomplishment of the condom campaign to prevent AIDS
is to impress the promoters, politicians and the public at large that
something is being done; and although well-intentioned, it offers more of
a placebo than a panacea.

Publicizing the condom to the four winds is, for the most part, the
bravura of a puritan who is trying to prove to the world that he is not a
puritan.

To concentrate on the mechanical aspects of the sex act to the exclusion
of the emotional and psychological aspects (which the condom campaign
ignores) is the essence of Puritanism.

The only difference between the new and the old is that whereas the
traditional puritans were alleged to believe that sex was something to be
isolated and repressed, neo-puritans accept sex as something to be
isolated and exercised. (28)

Reviewed by Joel McIlhaney, M.D., of the Medical Institute for Sexual
Health
28.Ratner, Herbert, M.D., "Condoms and AIDS," ALL About Issues, Feb. 1989,
p. 36