Most scientific studies? I can show heaps showing otherwise. For example:
http://www.rho.org/html/cont-male_condoms.htm#user
Does a statement like "The total clinical failures (slippage and breakage) were 8.4 percent for the polyurethane and 3.2 percent for the latex condom." address your concern regarding method failure?
I guess any lobby group can get their own studies done (certainly, the drug industry is famous for doing this).

So, how about policy? What standard do the condom manufacturers hold themselves to? The only figure I have seen that condoms must meet (regarding breakage - not permeability!) is 1.5 percent. You get no points for figuring out which industry is lobbying to not have that reduced any further (and, in fact, to have it increased). Surely, if condoms were so good, the acceptable breakage rate would be reduced to less than .1 percent at least!

Also, how can you so blithely brush aside what happens in practice? Sure, education will be your answer ... but we cannot even educate first world countries to do it right! Government policies should be based on what actively works and what is workable ... otherwise you get such fiascos as Botswana and Swazliand.

Your implicit question about abstinence, whether it would work or not, is very important. Is it workable? We know that people used to generally think abstinence before marriage was a good thing early in the 20th century. Is it possible today? Well, Uganda shows you it is possible. Uganda actively discouraged the use of condoms, except for sex workers who were never going to change their ways. Actually, their condom usage dropped over time and they radically reduced their incidence of AIDS. Also, they experienced what has been found to be the only factor common to those countries who reduce aids ... sexually active people reduced their number of sexual partners. There was also a rise in abstinence before marrisage and faithfulness during marriage. True, it will not work while we also hand out condoms because of the mixed message. However, we know it is possible and is the only way to really address the problem.

Paulb, your url suggests exactly what I was highlighting. Failure rate is referred in terms of first year of typical use, not per use.

Sex education works extremely well, when its done in a pragmatic way.
Compare the teenage pregnancy and teenage birthrates of Holland and
America, to get the picture. America, where they preach abstinence only, is 10X worse.

The reason that sex education is so bad in many countries, is of course the religious lobby, who protest loudly about their children being taught such "evil" things. Next thing, when teenagers hormones run riot and they break their pledges, they land up pregnant or with stds.

No doubt there are companies around the world who sell badly made condoms, like any other industrial product. Govts are free to legislate quality standards, as they do with anything else.
But what we can show is that most of the time its not the condom
thats the problem, but lack of knowledge by the user. That could
easily be changed, if the religious lobby was able to see reason,
which is easier said then done.

The Economist of 8th Sept. 2005 carries an interesting story about what happened in Uganda. I can't give you a link, as its subscription based, but you might find a copy somewhere.
The large reduction in Aids was achieved through their ABC
programme, Abstain- be faithfull-use a condom. Every schoolkid
learnt about them. The aids rate dropped accordingly.

Partly under American pressure ( George and his religious right)
the C was dropped in 2003, so now the aids rate is climbing back up again.

You'll find that people thinking that abstinence was a good thing,
was largey due to girls terrified of falling pregnent. As science
let that genie out of that bottle, you have buckley's chance of putting it back in again, as US pledge failures show. Meantime
those kids who get nothing but abstinence teachings, will highly
likely land up pregnant or with an std, as they have little or no knowledge of how to use contraceptives properly, should the need arise.

I did a bit of research on Holland's teenage pregnancy and birthrate, and it seems quite obvious why this occurred ... teenagers in Holland had much less sexual partners, and started having sex much later, than their U.S. counterparts. This is laudable and necessary. Actually, what happened in Uganda was also a reduction in sex before marriage (quite often to the level of abstinence) and faithfulness during marriage. True, condoms were given to sex workers, but people were strongly and actively discouraged from resorting to condoms (for obvious reasons - the ineffectivenss of them!). Note that even the World Health Organisation has recognised that the only common factor in cases where there has been a reduction in HIV infections is, you guessed it, a reduction in the number of sexual partners amongst sexually active people. The case of Holland simply proves the point.

I guess you could make the argument that the East African nation of Uganda was uniquely positioned to hear this message due to its large Catholic population (over 50 percent, I believe). Whereas, somewhere like Botswana with the largest AIDS problem in Africa, with a Catholic population of only 4 percent, may be less likely to want to hear the message of abstinence (depending on their culture). This may be an important issue to deal with when educating people about the problems of sex before marriage.

Education may solve the current 85 percent effectiveness of the condom although that is very questionable - education has not worked so far in any country. People know the message in first world countries and still don't follow (so what hope is there for third world countries)! However, education still cannot solve the breakage rate (and don't forget that the condom manufacturers hold themselves to 1.5 percent), and in a country like Botswana the cummulative odds of 1.5 percent alone is enough to increase the HIV-infected population substantially each year, that I fear that before long the entire population will have AIDS. Condoms can only provide an illusion of safety (which encourages more risky behaviour).

"I did a bit of research on Holland's teenage pregnancy and birthrate, and it seems quite obvious why this occurred ... teenagers in Holland had much less sexual partners, and started having sex much later, than their U.S. counterparts."

Thanks for that observation, Paul. Could you post the websites appertaining to your research, so that we can evaluate them for ourselves?

The website I've previously posted also indicates something similar:
http://www.clothesfree.com/pregnancy.html
[NB This website is nudist. I don't know what the attitude of On Line Opinion is to such things, but if you are offended by a very small amount of non-sexual nudity, then don't go to it.]
The article starts:

"Teen-agers in the United States are far more likely to get pregnant and get an abortion than their counterparts in Western European countries.

Planned Parenthood officials believe that's because Europeans talk to their teen-agers about sex differently from Americans, viewing it as a public health issue rather than a moral, religious or political matter."

The indication is that young people in various European countries are given appropriate sex education. They are certainly not denied condoms. Nor are they brainwashed with religious psuedo-morality. Also in Holland and various other European countries, clothes optional beaches are far more common than in the US or in Australia, enabling people to understand that nudity is not necessarily linked to sexuality.

Paulb, there is a clear pattern as to what works regards teen pregnancy and hiv etc, all over the place. It comes down to
pragmatic and open good education. Empowering people with
knowledge, then letting them make their own decisions, will
achieve results, anything else is a dismal failure.

http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_07/uk/apprend2.htm

tells you a bit about how its done in Holland.

Anywhere where aids has been an issue, condoms have played
a role in reduction of spread. Australia, with its grim
reaper campaign, is just one example. If you look at Africa,
two countries have had results, Uganda and Senegal. Both
promoted condoms as part of those campaigns, not just to
hookers either, but openly, even to schoolchildren. On billboards,
in newspapers, you name it, it was used, and it got results.
Aids has increased recently in Uganda, since the big C was dropped
out of the campaign, due to religious pressure.

Compare that to say Kenya, where things were not spoken of,
ads for condoms were removed from the press due to religious
pressure and bingo, the aids rate has kept on increasing.

Now you cannot ignore these worldwide trends in the name of
religious dogma, for all you are doing is killing more
Catholics. This is what Australia's top expat scientist
thought of Catholic anti condom policy in Africa:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/parting-shot-to-pope-get-real-on-aids/2005/12/03/1133422148025.html

Does sex education and the availability of condoms in first world countries actually reduce STD and AIDS?

"Sexual promiscuity, especially amongst adolescents, can and does have profound effects that can manifest for an entire lifetime. We now have a situation where many young women think it expected of them to offer exotic sexual favours to gain acceptance, popularity and male attention. Many young males in return come to regard women as sex toys for their own personal gratification. Young lives are scarred and destroyed in the process".

"Even ignoring the significant moral, psychological, emotional and spiritual effects that such practices can have on our young, the physical consequences can be horrific.

Despite intensive Federal and State education programs on so-called “Safe-Sex”, in excess of 52,000 Australians contract a sexually transmitted disease every year. In NSW, Syphilis has increased 15%, Gonococcal Infections 47% and Chlamydia a whopping 220% since this time in 2000. 11, 293 people, 60.7% of whom are 15-24 year olds, contracted Chlamydia alone last year in this state. This year in NSW, we are getting around 835 new reported cases of Chlamydia per month! Many more remain unreported.

The term “Safe Sex” is a misnomer that only further exacerbates the problem as our young are blinded to the dangers before them. There is no such thing as “safe sex”. It’s time our legislators began teaching children the value of personal pride, respect, dignity and ethics. Abstinence until marriage is the ONLY ‘Safe Sex’ and if educators where to start teaching that, we may just still have a chance to save some of our children from the burgeoning problems of STDs and social deterioration."