Open Letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and to the U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan.
Excellences:
I have followed this week, the first one of November, a broadcast on Channel 13 about the foreign policy of the U.S.A. in matter of health, particularly concerning the AIDS epidemics. This policy is inadequate and needs to be reviewed. Politics and medicine do not always mix (this letter is from a technician, not from a politician).
The promotion of the use of condoms and their distribution on a large scale by public health departments to control the AIDS epidemics is a must; it should not be subjected to any religious or moral restriction. However, the promotion of the use of condoms shall always be accompanied by public health education, a point that ex-president Carter failed to stress during his interview on Channel 13. Condoms alone are not enough to fight the A.I.D.S. epidemics and, at a long term, they will surely fail, since the later is often a consequence of improper sexual behavior.
Because the human population has grown also explosively for a nummber of reasons (like improvements in hygiene, nutrition and medicine), natural selection does not play any more to curb epidemics in populations. Concerning A.I.D.S., one can say that natural selection, with the survival and reproduction of the fittest, may be the result of proper behavior of relative abstinence and limitation of the number of partners (if possible to one); that is where religious conviction, particularly in the Western world, can play.
Finally the AIDS epidemics is caused by viruses and the later often undergo genetic changes that allow them to adapt easily to changing situations. Viruses can also be transmitted throug skin, like in the case of Herpes. There has been one report that AIDS can also be contracted through oral contact only.
Sincerely,
Dr. Roger Qualo.
PAGE UNIVERSITAIRE