Elton John, Pathologist

Yah.

Spake thus this glittering dimbulb:

British pop music star Elton John has attacked the Catholic Church and its position on condom use as a reason for the demise of 60 of his friends to the sexually-transmitted disease, AIDS. Speaking at a business awards ceremony, he said, "We don't have a medical vaccine but we have a social vaccine and it's called education."

Well, Sir Elton, here's a bit of education for you:

...[C]ondoms may be a leading reason for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Even leading health experts at the United Nations have acknowledged that condoms have an estimated 10% failure rate.
Edward C. Green, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health explained in 2003 that the one in ten failure rate of condoms protection from AIDS is "not good enough for a fatal disease."

What actually works?

Uganda's AIDS campaign, which stressed abstinence first and being faithful second and condoms only if one was crazy enough to forego the first two, has been seen as the only successful program in reversing the AIDS tide in Africa.

Appearing before the African subcommittee of the U.S. Senate on May 19, 2003, Green stated: "Infection rates [in Uganda] have declined from 21% to 6 % since 1991. Many of us in the AIDS and public health communities didn't believe that abstinence and faithfulness were realistic goals. It now seems we were wrong."

Surprise, surprise!

Perhaps Cdl. Martini, Friend of Rembert Weakland, should read the UN reports, too.