Amid reports that the United Nations has been grossly overestimating the scope of the global AIDS pandemic, a new book points to what may be an even greater miscalculation: AIDS relief efforts have failed to understand the crucial role of family and community networks in controlling the disease.

We're told by the mass media that condom distribution is the solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa and that the Catholic Church is standing in the way of that effort. The research, however, contradicts that view.

While the HIV virus continues to spread unchecked across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, in Uganda the rate of HIV infection has dropped from 18 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2001. Uganda's First Lady, Her Excellency Janet K. Museveni, explains how her country's aggressive effort to promote abstinence outside marriage, and fidelity within, was the engine behind Africa's only success story in fighting AIDS.

"Condoms don't work," said Dr. George Mulcaire-Jones. "In addition to doing little physically to prevent the transmission of HIV, condoms exacerbate the problem by promoting promiscuity in places where that behavior is most deadly at this point in time."

Uganda may be on its way to wiping out AIDS by using the Biblical values of chastity and fidelity, a new Harvard University study finds. According to the study, abstinence education has shown significant effectiveness in reducing AIDS in Uganda, with the HIV infection rate dropping 50 percent between the years 1992 and 2000.

The recent series on Priests and AIDS in the Kansas City Star used highly misleading statistics to promote an anti-Catholic agenda.