AIDS

AIDS is a disease caused by a virus. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The virus has been called HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).

A virus is a molecule of nucleic acid wrapped in proteins. Its activity is generally as follows: it enters a cell, forces it to reproduce the virus, and is expelled to the outside, repeating the process. Two classes of virus can be distinguished:

• Normal viruses composed of a DNA molecule. They follow the normal flow of information: DNA–RNA–proteins.
• Retroviruses, formed by an RNA molecule. Upon entering the cell, it converts into DNA before following the normal flow. HIV belongs to this type of virus.

AIDS is not transmitted through air, water, objects, animals, flies, or mosquitoes (it does not survive in mosquito saliva).

There are three ways:

• Parenteral (injections): this is the case of blood transfusions and the use of contaminated syringes (drug addicts, etc.). Today, blood for transfusions is very well controlled.
• Pre- and perinatal (from mother to child): currently there are ways of preventing this transmission.
• Sexual. This is the principal means of AIDS transmission. Simple contact between two genital mucous membranes suffices, since lymphocytes are always present there. Sex with multiple persons is what spreads the disease.

From 1982 to 2000, 22 million people died of AIDS (75% in Africa). In the year 2000, 36 million people were living with AIDS (70% in Africa). Since those who die are people between 15 and 50 years of age, problems of orphanhood arise. It is a serious matter.

Since blood transfusions are now very well controlled, it can be said that AIDS is acquired only through the sexual route. Therefore, faithful married couples have certainty of not being infected. And the effective measure for halting this epidemic is not having sex with multiple partners.

At the state level, the only measure that has worked against AIDS is the ABC strategy:

• A for abstinence: refraining from sexual relations. This is the priority message that must be conveyed, together with B.
• B stands for "be faithful" and represents the recommendation of mutual monogamy with an uninfected person.
• C stands for condom or contraceptive. This approach should be proposed only to people who reject the previous measures, especially if they belong to risk groups such as prostitution. But with the warning that this reduces but does not eliminate the risk of contagion.

The measure usually proposed against AIDS is the use of a condom. This measure is appropriate for risk groups, but it is not helpful to present it as the great solution for everyone, for two reasons:

• By recommending the condom, sex with various partners is encouraged, and this is precisely what spreads the epidemic.
• A condom used as a contraceptive works more or less well, but with a 15% failure rate. Against AIDS, its protection is somewhat worse. And it protects even less against sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV, etc.

It is alarming. Faced with AIDS, sexual promiscuity (freedom) is like pointing a 6-chamber revolver with five bullets at oneself. The same sexual wandering with a condom is equivalent to pointing that revolver with one bullet. If done often, contagion comes.

It would be effective against AIDS contagion, but it would continue to be morally wrong. That is a separate matter, but here are some reasons:

• It diminishes the dignity of human sexuality, which with a condom is reduced to something that produces pleasures.
• The condom diminishes the dignity of persons for the same reason: they offer their intimacy and gain not parenthood but only pleasures.
• The condom falsifies mutual self-giving, which becomes accepted selfishness. The capacity for love diminishes.

AIDS is not contracted through homosexuality per se, but through the use of sex with different persons until coming across someone infected — infected even if they do not yet know it, since this virus takes months to manifest itself.