On July 8, as the 14th International AIDS Conference was just getting underway in Barcelona, Spain, TV, radio, the Internet and the newspapers were filled with the latest stories about this worldwide epidemic. Despite decades of efforts to educate and inform the population while attempting to prevent and eradicate the disease, it continues to spread unabated. 

The New York Times reported on its front page that "the vast majority of young gay and bisexual men in the United States who were found to have the AIDS virus in a new study were unaware of their infection."

The article went on to say that most of the infected men thought they were at low risk of contracting HIV "despite having engaged in frequent, high-risk sex." 

An article the same day in The Wall Street Journal dealt with a new AIDS drug called T-20. Developed by Roche Holding, AG and Trimeris, Inc., it is the first of a new class of AIDS drugs called fusion inhibitors, which may be "able to suppress even super strains of HIV." But the article also cautioned that the drug "may prove unaffordable."

Reuters news service reported from the conference that a vaccine could be available for HIV within a decade. The article stated, "Dr. Seth Berkley, founder and president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), said an effective vaccine is the only way to end the pandemic, which threatens to kill more than 68 million people between 2000 and 2020."

Try as I might, I couldn't find any mention of the words 'immorality' or 'promiscuity' as a cause for the rampant spread of HIV in any of the stories I perused on the Internet or in the three major newspapers I read every day.

An editorial in the New York Times, while clamoring for "strong political leadership" as "the most important factor in preventing the spread of AIDS," decried the shortage of condoms in the countries where the disease is most prevalent. The closest the editors came to broaching the subject of personal responsibility was to state, "People do not easily change behavior, especially when it requires them to confront the possibility of death and negotiate new patterns of sexual relations."

I assume the editors at the New York Times were equating the practice of safe sex to "negotiating new patterns of sexual relations." It's doubtful they'd advocate abstinence.

Yet in the case of HIV, which is largely transmitted sexually, abstinence works one hundred percent of the time in preventing its transmission when sex is the vector.

Advocating abstinence is anathema to most members of the mainstream media, who seem to have a deep aversion to anything that involves moralizing about human sexuality. It smacks too much of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign to prevent illicit drug use among teenagers. It was a simple, common sense approach that worked, by the way.

At the end of the day, if you dug deep enough through the pile of stories that detailed the human suffering and the bleak prognosis for an end to the worldwide AIDS crisis, there was one lone voice of reason.

The Associated Press reported that Pope John Paul appealed to the world's young people to follow a path of chastity. In his weekly address to the people in St. Peter's Square he cautioned against following the impulses of pleasure. Citing the story of Saint Maria Goretti, a young girl who was murdered by an older man after she rebuffed his sexual advances, the Pope said her story was a reflection of "the importance of values that should not be compromised."

But it was the apostle Paul who was most direct.

Writing to the church in Corinth over 2,000 years ago he warned simply, "Flee sexual immorality."

In three words much like "Just Say No," he offered a clarion call of human reason. His was a simple, common sense approach, the equivalent of a safe, effective and inexpensive vaccine to prevent the spread of HIV in cases resulting from promiscuous behavior.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com. Visit our website at www.amyfound.org.