from LifeNews: "Of course they should be reviewed,'' Frist said. "That's in part our responsibility to make sure that all of these programs are reviewed.''
"Whether it's abstinence or whether it's a condom or whether it is better education on the infectivity of how washing hands in terms of the flu, all of these are public health challenges that we need in terms of better education," Frist said on the ABC television show.
Frist also said he backs President Bush's pro-abstinence approach to sexual education.
In an October speech to the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador Sichan Siv encouraged member nations to promote abstinence to combat the growing threat of the AIDS virus.
"The promotion of behavior change -- encouraging abstinence and fidelity -- is integral to our fight against HIV/AIDS," Siv said.
California Congressman Henry Waxman, a Democrat, released the report Wednesday contending that the abstinence education plans funded by the Bush administration teach "false and misleading information."
However, Kimberly Martinez, executive director of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, says the medical information used by abstinence only education programs, "are medically referenced back to peer-reviewed journals, and other reputable sources, such as the CDC or NIH."
Martinez also questioned a statement early in the Waxman report claiming a "scarcity" of programs that teach contraception and sex to children and teens.
"This type of contraceptive sex education has been in schools for more than 30 years," clarified Martinez. "In fact in 2002, the Kaiser Family Foundation published that 90% of all American high school students receive sex education before graduation."
I was watching the cable news story on this earlier this past week. It turns out some liberal special interest group found a series of mistakes in the abstinance education curriculum. They tried to make the point that the abstinence education was unscientific and false. An example: masturbation can lead to pregnancy.
However, on closer examination, you see something else. It becomes almost a case study on how the liberals can distort an issue.
They found about a dozen instances of unscientific teaching in the entire curriculum. These dozen instances were found in about 100,000 pages of curriculum material throughout the US. A dozen instances in 100,000 pages.
However, all that was reported was the dozen instances. Not the context. Not the fact that is was such a small fraction.
Two simple conclusions:
1. Yes, abstinence education could be improved, as can every other human endeavor.
2. Abstinence education is excellent if all they can find is a dozen mistakes or so.
what's wrong with masterbation...