I wanted to answer a question in the DH, but I don't have posting privileges there. I know this topic pretty well so I figured why not.
Might I point out, that had we listened to religious people and not encouraged multiple partners and perhaps things like homosexuality, the aids problem would probably be no where near as big as it is in the first place correct?
No, not really.
First thing worth pointing out is that the majority of HIV is spread by unprotected heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual.
I'll try to keep this as apolitical as I can (if that is possible). Back in 2000 George W. Bush was elected, riding on a popular neoconservative social, moral and political agenda. Right wing religious thinking with well publicized pro-abstinence and anti-abortion stances played an important role throughout his campaign.
I'll start with
changes made in USA. It was argued that because condoms do not provide ''perfect'' protection it is irresponsible to promote their use and abstinence should be promoted instead. The Bush administration pressured the CDC to issue new regulations. It became mandatory for any organisation receiving funding for HIV prevention to ensure that any sex education be required to include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condoms''. The CDC subsequently removed a fact sheet entitled ''Condoms and Their Use in Preventing HIV Infection and Other STDs'' from their website. This page was replaced by a new fact sheet that omitted instructions on appropriate condom use and more importantly, evidence showing that condom education does not encourage sex in young people.
The Bush administration then went on to boost Abstinence Only Programmes. SPRANS (Special Programs of Regional and National Significance Community-Based Abstinence Education), had dispensed over $339 million by the end of 2006. Section 510 of the Welfare Reform Act had poured $300 million over 6 years for programmes with the exclusive purpose of promoting abstinence. Information on contraception, sexual identity and human sexuality was prohibited! The Adolescent Family Life Act received $12 million a year from 2003 for Abstinence Only programs. This was not a small amount of money by anybody's standards.
The international consequences. The USA contributed billions of dollars to the international AIDS/HIV program. Unfortunately, this was undermined by two congressional ammendments: The Pitt amendment where ''…at least 33% (of the prevention funds) should be expended for abstinence-until-marriage programs'' and The Smith amendment that allows "faithbased" groups to refuse to provide information about proven methods of protection against HIV/AIDS (namely condoms).
The US was accused by Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, of cutting funding for condoms in Uganda. These actions dented some international HIV prevention campaigns placing many people, particularly women in sub-Saharan Africa, at increased risk of HIV acquisition.
Now the big question is, does abstinence work? Perhaps the Bush Administration was justified. In 2007, a very large, long-term (10 years) evaluation was published, involving over 2000 youths who were randomly assigned to either receive well established Federally Funded abstinence-only programs or not (the controls). Here is a link:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/impactabstinence.pdf. Outcome measures included sexual abstinence, risk behaviour, knowledge of the consequences of sexual activity and perceptions about risk of pregnancy and STIs. The results:
49% in both groups remained abstinent
23% in both groups had sex and always used a condom
17% in both groups had sex and sometimes used a condom
4% in both groups never used condoms
The age at coitarche (first sexual intercourse) was identical in both groups (14.9 years)
The overall number of sexual partners in both groups was virtually identical
Knowledge about STIs and STI risk behaviours and the potential benefits of condoms for pregnancy prevention and STI prevention were poor in both groups. Overall, the youth assigned to the intervention program considered that condoms to be less effective for preventing STIs.
So to answer your question: No, not really. Things are probably worsened.
