9 months after Magic Johnson's press conference did the birth rate dip?

If people got the educational message the rates of sexually transmitted
infections would drop and the birth rate would drop. The biological
imperative is too powerful a force. Also note that too often the
pendulum effect is interpreted as change. And data over a short period
of time should be questioned.

See also a collaborative blog about the strategy of
getting tested together before you have sex
http://NotB4WeKnow.EditThisPage.com

THIS SHOULD ANSWER YOUR QUESTION

Sex And HIV: Behaviour-Change Trial Shows No Link

The East African (Nairobi)
March 17, 2003
Posted to the web March 19, 2003

By Paul Redfern, Special Correspondent Nairobi

A UK funded trial aimed at reducing the spread of Aids in Uganda by
modifying sexual behaviour appears to have had little discernible effect.

The trial, carried out on around 15,000 people in the Masaka region,
involved distributing condoms, treating around 12,000 victims of sexually
transmitted diseases and counselling.

However, while the trial led to a marked change in sexual behavioural
patterns, with the proportion reporting causal sexual partners falling
from around 35 per cent to 15 per cent, there was no noticeable fall in
the number of new cases of HIV infection, although there was a significant
reduction in sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and
gonorrhoea.

The trial results, which were reported in the British medical journal The
Lancet, have already aroused some controversy.
The team leader of the trial, Dr Anatoli Kamalai, acknowledged that there
was "no measurable reduction" in HIV incidence with "no hint of even a
small effect."

http://allafrica.com/stories/200303190482.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200303190482.html

_______

"Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role"

washingtonpost.com
Uganda's AIDS Decline Attributed to Deaths
By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page A02

BOSTON, Feb. 23 -- Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no
role in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely
studied region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS
scientists here.
It is the deaths of previously infected people, not dramatic change in
human behavior, that is the main engine behind the ebbing of the overall
rate,
or prevalence, of AIDS in southern Uganda over the last decade, they
reported.
The findings, not yet published, contradict earlier evidence that
attributed Uganda's success in AIDS prevention largely to campaigns
promoting
abstinence and faithfulness to sex partners. Much of the prevention work
in the Bush administration's $15 billion global AIDS plan is built around
those two themes, and Uganda is frequently cited as evidence that the
strategy
works.

If the report here stands up to scrutiny -- and, more important, is borne
out by surveys elsewhere in Uganda -- it will deflate one of the few
supposed triumphs to come out of AIDS-battered Africa in the last decade.

The success of Uganda's ABC strategy -- the letters stand for
"abstinence," "be faithful" and "(use) condoms" -- has been widely touted
and is on the verge of being exported to neighboring countries with the
help of American money.

"There is an urgent need to assess abstinence and monogamy in other parts
of Uganda," said Maria J. Wawer, a physician at Columbia University's
Mailman