How to prevent AIDS

AIDS, a dreaded disease, is a communicable disease which is transmitted either sexually or through blood transfusion. According to DOH figures, the figure of AIDS infected Filipinos is rising.

Now, again, Health secretary Esperanza Cabral wants to promote the use of contraceptives or condoms to prevent the further spread of the disease. Condoms, she says, are best devices for preventing the spread of AIDS. Is this true?

There are numerous studies which show that, indeed, some instances were prevented using condoms. The best way, however, in AIDS prevention, and like in the issue of unwanted teenage pregnancies, is, again, thinking and acting responsibly.

Why use condoms when you know your partner is clean? You only use condom when you engage in illicit relations or when you want to limit your brood to either one or two. If you don't engage in illicit sexual activities, meaning, you don't go to a prostitution front or have sex with someone you barely know, you don't need to use a condom. Don't tell me you use a condom with your wife or husband? You use it when you want to "limit" the number of mouths you want to feed, but, regularly, will you? Obviously not.

The state should not promote the use of the condom simply because it conditions the minds of the people that they can liberally engage in sex whenever they want. Companies who sell condoms position their products as "safe contraceptions." They try to tell us that it's okey to have sex anytime and with anyone you like for as long as you use it.

Crap.

I know of many people who contracted sexually transmissible diseases like gonorrhea etc. even when they used condoms. How not to contract such a disease? Don't have sex with someone who has it, simple. And the only way for you to do that is simply engage in sex with someone you know for a long time and hopefully, within the confines of marriage. You don't marry someone with gonorrhea or with the crabs, would you?

Another way of preventing the spread of AIDS and or preventing unwanted pregnancies is get rid of those "sex-stimulants" being sold in various gas stations and even 7-eleven or Mini-stop stores.

Unknown to many, sex stimulant drinks have been at the shelves and front counters of several groceries and mini-groceries throughout Metro Manila. Even kids can actually buy those stimulants.

Finally, a better way of trying to solve these problems is simply ask advertising agencies and media outlets to lessen ads that depict sex and try to sell their client's products the best way without using nude or semi-nude models as endorsers. Or even if they sell sex, at least, position it or at least depict "responsible sex". Try to lessen the use of young, sexy teenagers in your ads and encourage ads that calls for responsible sex. That will lessen the incidence of sex.

TV networks should also promote shows that does not glorify teenage pregnancies. That Katorse show, which was aired over ABS-CBN2 for a time and this program titled "Rubi" depicts characters which engage in sex not their partners. No redeeming value, just pure, unaldurated sex. These characters even got a happy ending. This is not helping the state's campaign to curb this rising social problem of unwanted pregnancies. No. It is not helping deter these problems; it is actually abetting certain acts.

In other countries, such as the United States, the vogue there is abstinence from sex. Many American teenagers have joined the Abstinence brigade not because they hate sex, no. They want to engage in it at a proper time, when they have the means to do it. Religion has nothing to do with their belief. It is more of the practicality of it than anything else.

Lastly, we must treat sex as what it is---an enjoyable enterprise engaged by humans in the search for true nirvana. Nirvana, as I mean here, is a state of Being when a human realizes the joy of uniting with his partner in the spirit of Love and Caring.

Bull.