WHO angered by cardinal claiming condoms unsafe

The UN health agency is strongly contesting the reported claim of a top Vatican cardinal that condoms don't properly protect against AIDS -- a view that anti-HIV campaigners deny.

The Vatican has repeatedly opposed condoms as a way to fight AIDS, saying chastity is the best way to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. The Vatican has been criticized for its opposition, particularly in poor regions of the world devastated by AIDS.

The latest difference arose after Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the BBC that the HIV virus is small enough to pass through a condom.

The BBC released a partial transcript of his comments, some of which will be broadcast today in a documentary called Panorama -- Sex and the Holy City.

``The AIDS virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the `net' that is formed by the condom,'' Lopez Trujillo is quoted as saying in the BBC interview late last month.

``These margins of uncertainty should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger.''

A World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman said officials hadn't seen the BBC program yet, but said any claim that condoms don't protect against HIV is ``totally wrong.''

``When you use a condom badly so that it breaks or slips or it is past its `use-by date' it is not very effective,'' spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said.

``Two years ago, in June 2001, there was a big study that reviewed all the literature on male condoms. This study showed that condoms are 90 percent effective against HIV/AIDS infection, and the other 10 percent is when they were used wrongly," she said.

``It is quite dangerous to claim the contrary when you realize that today we are facing an epidemic which has already killed 20 million people and 42 million people are infected today,'' Chaib said.

Lopez Trujillo told the BBC: ``There are several doctors on our pontifical council, and these people have studied this matter, and they have also given instruction through various published articles, so we have not seen any denial of this fact at the level of medicine.''

When confronted with scientific research showing that intact condoms are an effective barrier against sexually transmitted diseases, Lopez Trujillo said: ``They are wrong about that, this is an easily recognizable fact,'' according to the BBC.

Dr Thomas Quinn, an HIV expert speaking on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said several scientific studies show that the virus cannot pass through condoms.

``The mechanical barrier is 100 percent except when there are tears or breaks, so they are absolutely incorrect,'' he said. ``They are going to need to come up with scientific proof to prove that statement wrong because there is a multitude of publications that show that the virus cannot pass through the latex of the condom.''

Lopez Trujillo had no immediate comment.

Last year, the Vatican repeated its opposition to condoms. Monsignor Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers, acknowledged that to some, the Vatican position may sound ``ridiculous in the society in which we live.''

But he said there was only one way to prevent AIDS and the HIV virus from spreading. ``We say that prevention ... is called chastity.''

The Church has argued that condoms don't offer 100 percent protection and only contribute to what Barragan called a ``pan-sexual'' society in which sex has been separated into an act of pleasure or procreation.