THE WEEK

□ Well, there goes Central America.

□ Dr. C. Everett Koop, our surgeon general, is unduly enamored of the notion that the rate of transmission of sexual diseases—principally AIDS—could be decisively reduced if male participants in sexual acts used condoms. An obvious difficulty is that condoms are often ineffective. Furthermore, everyone, including homosexuals, knows about them anyway, and so the Koop hullabaloo seems excessive. Perhaps, appalled by AIDS projections, he felt he had to do something. Phyllis Schlafly points out an anomaly: Dr. Koop opposes smoking as vigorously as he opposes AIDS, but his approach to smoking is radically different, in that he encourages total abstinence. So why doesn’t he advocate at least commitment and monogamy as a social antidote to AIDS? The condom is to venereal disease what the filter tip is to lung cancer: It cuts the odds—which may not be good enough where AIDS is concerned.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

□ Well, there goes Central America.

□ Dr. C. Everett Koop, our surgeon general, is unduly enamored of the notion that the rate of transmission of sexual diseases—principally AIDS—could be decisively reduced if male participants in sexual acts used condoms. An obvious difficulty is that condoms are often ineffective. Furthermore, everyone, including homosexuals, knows about them anyway, and so the Koop hullabaloo seems excessive. Perhaps, appalled by AIDS projections, he felt he had to do something. Phyllis Schlafly points out an anomaly: Dr. Koop opposes smoking as vigorously as he opposes AIDS, but his approach to smoking is radically different, in that he encourages total abstinence. So why doesn’t he advocate at least commitment and monogamy as a social antidote to AIDS? The condom is to venereal disease what the filter tip is to lung cancer: It cuts the odds—which may not be good enough where AIDS is concerned.