Condoms only 85 percent effective - not true!

I just "hate it" when people hijack issues, put in their moral grounds, and perpetuate their dogma onto others. Worse when they do it without letting you know.

Condoms only 85 percent effective - not true!

Tells of how statistics in scientific studies are misquoted or misinterpreted by non-statistically trained people.

From 99% effectiveness, to less than 85% :

...(snipped)...

These studies followed sero-discordant, sexually active heterosexual couples over a period of time. 'Sero-discordant' meant that at the start of the studies, one partner was HIV-positive and the other HIV-negative.

...(snipped)...

In layman's language:

For every 100 couples having sex repeatedly through the course of a year, using condoms every time, only 0.9 persons sero-converted to HIV-positive.

(This suggests that if you are HIV-negative, and with the consistent benefit of condoms, you had sex with an HIV-positive person over a 100-year period, your chance of being HIV-positive after 100 years would be 0.9%.)

For every 100 couples having sex repeatedly through the course of a year, but never used condoms, 6.7 of the initially HIV-negative partners, sero-converted to HIV-positive.

And where's the "85 percent" in all this? By this mathematical formula:

(6.7-0.9)/6.7 = 0.85

What the researchers said was that the condom-protected couples, with their 0.9 sero-conversion rate, had an 85% lower likelihood of getting HIV compared to the no-condom couples. They didn't mean to say that if you used a condom you still had a 15% chance of getting AIDS.

Your chances of actually getting HIV, with consistent, correct condom use is estimated to be less than 1% even after a hundred years of sex.