In response to the (Monday) Exponent letter by Brian McGreer, since it is the responsibility of the educated to help prevent damage caused by the ignorant, his comments must be addressed. What Mr. McGreer wrote, if taken as truth, could be quite dangerous. Let me start by assuring everyone that Mr. McGreer's 99.7 percent efficiency of condoms is either 100 percent fantasy or he failed to mention the potential error of up to 20 percent. There has never been and there will probably never be a study done on the efficacy of condoms with findings significant to 0.1 percent. Then Mr. McGreer goes on to assume that a condom is equally efficient at preventing the spread of HIV as it is in preventing pregnancy, which is of course 100 percent wrong. Condom producers have gone to some length to minimize the size of the pores in their product, but the truth is that latex condoms, in extreme cases, can have pores as large a three microns. Compare this to the ability of the HIV virus, also in extreme cases, to get through pores as small as one micron. Studies have shown that you can reduce the chance of transmitting a STD or HIV by a factor of about 12 by using a latex condom. After spewing this fiction, Mr. McGreer then tried his hand at misinformation by saying that intercourse is a biological imperative. This is only true within a very narrow definition that Mr. McGreer failed to mention. For sexually reproducing species, intercourse is required only to propagate the species. There is no scientific evidence showing that intercourse is required in order to prevent death or harm beyond that caused by frustration. If Mr. McGreer feels otherwise, there are doctors trained to treat that particular ailment.