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We are talking about an area of the world where some people believe that sex with a virgin cures AIDS.
I heard an especially distressing story on the BBC Radio4 Africa season about health education workers trying to get across that this is complete garbage, and yet encountering that toddlers were being raped to death in an effort to cure people.
Anything that gets the chance of infection rates falling has got to be worth trying.
If you want to suggest that people in Africa will listen to scientific reason, then can I remind you that schools in the USA are still being told that Intelligent Design is a fair alternative to Darwinian Evolution.
So if people in as rich and well educated country as the US can be so out of phase with most scientists, how do you expect uneducated poor Africans to not doubt science?
Primary research into how HIV is spread is vital to contain and eradicate it. If you cut off a guy's foreskin and he becomes less likely to get AIDS you spent pennies and gave a permanent improvement in his chances. Condoms cost quite a lot if you are going to use them for a lifetime.
Also - it is wrong to judge a culture of promiscuity by the morals of a monogamous one. It doesn't make them bad people just because they have been raised KNOWING that a real man has sex with prostitutes.
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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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