From our friend , Barry Hillenbrand, retired correspondent for Time magazine, recently teaching in southern Africa:

Had dinner the last two Saturdays with a Johns Hopkins Global Aids Educator (MD, MPH) who runs some sort of Hopkins AIDS program. Her view was that the trend line, in Africa (which has somethinglike 90 percent of theprevalence worldwide) is going down ever so slightly, but they simply have not broken the infection rate (there are no numbers on infection rates, only prevalence once a case is discovered or being treated). She talked about some ofthe stuff mentioned in the Washington Post article (The Pope May Be Right, Outlook, March 29, 2009) making up the fabric of the problem: social issues like multiple partners. Condoms are not the solution, but part of the solution and that dropping them out of the mix of solutions before African men take a vow of fidelity breaking hundreds of years of cultural attitudesjust does not make sense. She says she has not seen convincing data that condoms make the situation worse, but agrees in some situations that it mightmaking men feel safebut in others, non-use would make the situation worse. For what it'sworthshe said she'd rather throw the dice in favor of condoms doing more good than harm. But she agreed data is not perfectly clear nor on one side. Meanwhile, she said, she welcomes any and all programs to try and break the spread cycle.

"In Lesotho at lunch, a couple of Basoto women started talking about an AIDS program to increase the number of circumcised (and,therefore, cleaner) men. Surgical packs for the operation will be offered to village and even urban traditional medicine men to do the operation. Then the women started talking about the pope's statement (without myprodding, honest); theconclusionwas that sure, fidelity and single partners are fine ideas and a way to break the AIDS cycle, but please, it just not going to happen anytime soon. Lots of eye rolling at the idea. 'We know our men.'"