| Then there’s another
person who thinks that the youths of today don’t
know enough about a common sexually transmitted infection,
and proposes that information about that infection be
added to the fine print on the back of condom packets.
How would you say these two positions relate to one
another?
If you said the two stances seem to be polar opposites,
congratulations, you seem to be able to grasp the differences
between opinions. If you said the two positions are
the same, I hope you never take a MENSA test. If you
said “Yes — that makes perfect sense!”
you might just be the president of the United States.
That’s right: Dubya himself — the same
guy who put his proposal to double the funding for abstinence-only
programs to $270 million in his State of the Union speech
— is worried that we don’t know enough about
human papillomavirus, or HPV. He’s so worried,
in fact, that he would like us to learn about it while
perusing that little plastic packet.
Now of course, the Shrub is not exactly doing this
out of concern that uninformed Americans are putting
themselves at risk. The information proposed is more
of a warning that condoms do not prevent all sexually
transmitted diseases.
To be clear on this: He’s partially right. He’s
telling a half-truth. Some sexually transmitted infections,
such as chlamydia or HIV (the virus that causes AIDS),
are spread through the exchange of body fluids. Thus,
if a condom is used, fluids are not exchanged, and the
risk of transmitting such an infection is very low.
But other sexually transmitted infections, such as genital
herpes or HPV, can be transmitted through skin-to-skin
contact. Since a condom doesn’t cover all of the
skin contacting other skin, it cannot offer complete
protection against such infections.
Simply adding a warning that says: “This won’t
protect you from the dreaded HPV,” however, is
not the complete story either. HPV is a virus with more
than 100 viral types, and only about a third of those
are sexually transmitted. Because it is a viral infection,
there is no cure for HPV, but most infections are asymptomatic,
or go away without treatment. In a number of studies,
more than 90 percent of cases simply go away within
two to five years of infection — and again, many
of those cases have no symptoms even while still present.
This is not to say that HPV is a sexually transmitted
disease without consequences. The way most people know
of HPV already is genital warts: lesions or warts on
affected areas caused by certain types of the virus.
Yet again, only 1 percent of the adult U.S. population
has genital warts, and almost one-third of such cases
clear up without any treatment. It is also true that
there is a link between HPV infection and cervical cancer
— but only 1 in 1,000 women with HPV develops
invasive cervical cancer, and cervical cancer is one
of the most treatable types of cancer.
Now before all of you worriedly check your little black
books to make sure we didn’t meet in any bars
recently, let me explain that I know all of this not
only because Planned Parenthood’s Web site (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/)
has some of the most comprehensive and accurate information
availabel on sexually transmitted infections, but also
because I worked for Planned Parenthood during college
— teaching a comprehensive sexual education program
in Los Angeles. Planned Parenthood would spend two full
weeks in the classroom running through the “Positive
Images” curriculum, and one of the lessons I taught
was the day spent on sexually transmitted infections.
The curriculum covered six: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis,
HIV/AIDS, genital herpes and genital warts.
Obviously, it is not abstinence-only education. That
is not to say abstinence wasn’t included. All
of day six was spent discussing abstinence — what
exactly abstinence means, why it is the only way to
completely prevent sexually transmitted infections and
pregnancy, what reasons might be behind someone choosing
to remain abstinent, what alternatives to having intercourse
there are for dating couples, even a video on the perils
of teen pregnancy with musical interludes. Abstinence
also was discussed on most, if not all, of the other
days. For example, on the day we covered contraceptive
methods, the first one mentioned was — you guessed
it — abstinence. One of the last days the class
would review a flow chart called “Choices and
Consequences,” in which students would review
the different options a person has about sexual activity,
and all of the potential consequences those choices
have. Obviously, the “consequences” list
under “choosing to remain abstinent” was
a great deal shorter than the list under “choosing
to have sexual intercourse.”
But under the type of abstinence-only education the
Boy Who Would Be King promotes, none of that information
would be discussed. Under the definition of abstinence-only
education as specified in the Social Security Act, two
of the eight principles are (1) to teach that abstinence
outside of marriage is the “expected standard”
for students, and (2) that a “mutually faithful
monogamous relationship in the context of marriage”
is, again, the “expected standard.” Let’s
go over that again: Fully one-fourth of the principles
of this “sexual education” program teach
the children of America what religio-moral standard
their sexual activity will be held to. Let’s just
ignore the obvious problems that this sermon of how
society wishes us to behave in our bedroom completely
leaves out any homosexuals — as they cannot fulfill
the marriage requirement for societally approved sexual
activity — and the issue of whether any sexual
education really should be taking such a monolithic
approach to teaching values in a country of such diversity.
A larger problem is that abstinence-only sexual education
not only takes out the sexual part, it also removes
the education. Abstinence-only programs generally completely
omit any mention of topics such as abortion, homosexuality
or masturbation. Such programs usually give out incorrect
information about sexually transmitted diseases; inflating
statistics and giving threateningly vague explanations
of how they are transmitted, purposefully leading to
the conclusion that sexually transmitted infections
are an inevitable result of premarital sex. The only
contraceptive method mentioned is condoms, and even
then the only information given is of exaggerated failure
rates.
But perhaps you protest, how ever will we convince
the youngsters of today not to engage in premarital
or too-young intercourse without using scare tactics?
Why, I just saw a bunch of angry thugs-in-training scared
straight by screaming drill sergeants on Jenny Jones!
If we tell these children how to use condoms, they might
… use them!
That’s precisely the point — but not exactly
in the way that argument intends. Virtually all data
on the efficacy of abstinence-only programs indicate
that such programs do not reduce the numbers of students
having sex. A 2003 self-evaluation by the Minnesota
Department of Health looking at the state’s five-year
abstinence-only program found that the percentage of
students in the course who were sexually active doubled.
Even among students who take the extra step of pledging
to remain virgins until marriage, the harmful effects
of abstinence-only mind-set are evident. Despite such
committed students indeed having intercourse at a lower
rate — having intercourse later and with fewer
partners than students who do not make such a pledge
— the rate of sexually transmitted infections
is the same. Why? Because the students who pledged to
remain virgins are much less likely to use condoms.
In a recent study, 59 percent of male teenagers who
had not made a pledge used a condom during intercourse,
while only 40 percent of those who did pledge to remain
abstinent did.
Let me sum this up for the few Bush supporters who
might still be reading: Sexual abstinence programs do
not work to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Unfortunately,
the Bush administration’s focus is not on making
sure the nation’s teenagers are safe. It is on
providing government kickbacks to his far-right fan
base. Abstinence-only funding has been a pork-laden
windfall for reactionary Christian groups who teach
that premarital sex will lead to your premature death,
virus-ridden, depressed, and alone.
Information demonstrating the stubborn fallacy of this
approach has been excised from government publications:
the Centers for Disease Control used to list “Programs
that Work,” identifying sexual education programs
that had hard data showing their efficacy. All such
programs, of course, were comprehensive rather than
abstinence-only, so the listing was discontinued and
all references to the previous listings were cleansed
from the CDC Web site. The CDC and U.S. Agency for International
Development Web sites also have removed fact sheets
with accurate information on the efficacy of condoms
to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Sadly, such a campaign of mis(sing)-information at
the expense of good policy is par for Bush’s course.
He nearly has tripled the funding to abstinence-only
programs run by anti-abortion groups and explicitly
religious institutions. He has appointed discredited
extremists to high office, such as Dr. Joe McIlhaney,
the founder of an abstinence-only think tank, which
was reprimanded by the Texas Department of Health for
disseminating inaccurate information about sexually
transmitted infections and condoms. McIlhaney now sits
on the advisory committee to the director of the CDC
and the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. And
he ignores the wealth of information showing that teaching
both abstinence and accurate information about contraceptives
and sexually transmitted diseases will lower teen pregnancy
rates and rates of infection.
The “pray-sident” thus values partisan
political gain over the health of America’s children.
He funds programs proven to be ineffective to reduce
disease, and conceals accurate information that would
help reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections
in youths. He knowingly promulgates half-truths that
are designed to mislead young people in a way guaranteed
to harm a certain percentage of them. No wonder he’s
called the “edumacation president.”
For
an archive of Dara's columns, visit her archive page
at http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/dara/.
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