The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, April 8, 1996                  TAG: 9604050021
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   37 lines

CORRECT HIV MISINFORMATION

Recently the Virginia Beach school system mailed a 1996 Parent Guide to all school patrons. It contains family-life-program lesson objectives and articles on how to talk to your children about sexual behavior and facts regarding HIV/AIDS.

As a parent and health professional, I appreciate the efforts of the HIV/AIDS Parent Information Committee appointed by the School Board to open a dialogue about these matters, but I take issue with some wrong information presented in the article on HIV/AIDS.

The guide states that ``laboratory studies have shown that the virus can pass through condoms,'' but does not cite these studies. While this statement is true for natural-skin condoms, all individuals should know that a correctly stored and used latex-rubber condom is the best protection currently available to prevent the spread of the HIV virus in sexually active individuals. The virus does not pass through an intact latex-rubber condom.

Talking to your children about the emotional and physical consequences of early/unprotected sexual intercourse is an effective way of dealing with this issue, but providing them with wrong information can cause more harm than good. My greatest fear is that an adult or teen may acquire the virus because of reading this wrong statement and decide not to use condoms, believing them to be ineffective. The School Board and the AIDS/HIV Parent Information Committee needs to correct this misinformation.

PATRICIA BENSON, RN

Family nurse practitioner

Virginia Beach, March 26, 1996 by CNB