Posted on 05/31/2006 6:31:43 AM PDT by rhema
When Iona Nikitchenko, Joseph Stalin's hand-picked jurist for the Nuremberg tribunal, showed up for duty, he asked his fellow judges, "What is meant in the English by 'cross-examine'?" Not a good sign.
The biannual National STD Prevention Conference, which met last month in Jacksonville, Fla., was not much in the mood for cross-examination either. Leaders had packed the court with a pretty parcel of preening advocates of politically popular solutions for sexually transmitted diseases.
The politically unpopular solution is abstinence, of course. Its invitation to the ball was conspicuously overlooked, at least in the view of Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who chairs the House subcommittee on drug policy. He challenged the composition of a panel without a speaker supporting abstinence programs, and with all speakers set to deliver presentations against abstinence.
The Centers for Disease Control, main sponsor of the conference, heard the voice of one congressman crying in the wilderness and canned the kangaroo court by deleting one anti-abstinence spokesman (William Smith of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) and adding two for the pro-abstinence side, Patricia Sulak of Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Texas (and founder of a program called "Worth the Wait"), and Eric Walsh of Loma Linda University.
You can write the rest of this column yourself. A "shocked" Mr. Smith asked, "What does this say about the ability of politicians to influence what is going on in public health?" Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) called the switch "inexcusable." Joseph Zenilman, president of the co-sponsoring American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, was "surprised and astounded" at the way "the process of peer review" had been "subverted by pure politics." Bruce Trigg, conference organizer, condemned "this type of interference at a scientific meeting."
One would have thought a "scientific meeting" was a meeting at which all sides of a question are considered. One would have thought anti-abstinence ideology would be "cross-examined" under the circumstances. And these are the circumstances, as stated by the 2006 Conference itself: "STD rates remain unacceptably high in groups such as adolescents and men who have sex with men. Socio-cultural norms have not been conducive to understanding and addressing sexual risk behaviors."
Dovetailing the Jacksonville event, I spoke last week with a Ugandan named Martin Ssempa who knows something about abstinence programs and "socio-cultural norms." In April of 2005, he testified before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations: "The country [after Idi Amin's rule] was in chaos. . . . We had no funds to purchase condoms even if we wanted to. Therefore, the Musevenis [the new president and his born-again wife] spoke to their people . . . : 'Abstain and you will not get it, and be faithful to one uninfected partner and you will not get it.'" They called the message "zero grazing." A socio-cultural norm, you know.
Pastor Ssempa said, "President Museveni actually traveled from village to village with a bullhorn. . . . The first lady . . . was vocal about the program and all public and many private agencies were involved. . . . The health ministry, the local health agencies, the schools, the churches, and other faith-based organizations, the newspapers and the radio—all were involved. And the program worked. HIV/AIDS incidence rates fell in the late 1980s and the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate fell from 21 percent in 1992 to around 6 percent in 2002. I know of no other country which has cut its HIV/AIDS prevalence rate by two-thirds."
Pastor Ssempa lamented to the House committee a new enemy threatening to hijack his country's success story: "That enemy is the Western belief that condoms can end the HIV/AIDS epidemic." He said, "Condom social marketing, the primary HIV/AIDS prevention method promoted by . . . Western donors for the last 18 years, has not worked."
The church Mr. Ssempa pastors on the campus of Makerere University of Kampala, Uganda's largest school, is where his abstinence rally, called "Primetime," attracts 5,000 students weekly. These in turn fan out to their home districts carrying a healthy ideology. I asked him what he's done since April '05. He said he and his new Global Center have declared 2006 the year to fight abstinence stigma.
Abstinence stigma, hmm. He meant the cultural stigma in Africa, but also, I think, the one infecting scientific inquiry. I told him what I had seen in the papers that day about Jacksonville, and he wasn't a bit surprised.
Abstinence works every time it is used. Too much common sense for our sophisticated, socio-scientific community? Or maybe it points to self-control (and realizing actions have consequences and that gee whiz - AIDS isn't Reagan's fault after all), which is absolutely not popular.
The ardent followers of the recent President Who Thought With His Glands have long since tossed that noun down the memory hole.
What a great billboard! It gives me hope for the future. Thanks for posting.
First, abstinence is seen as a religious (think Evangelical Christian in these peoples' minds) idea, which automatically makes it evil. But, even if true, that is simply attacking the messenger.
Second, I believe that many who are vehemently opposed to abstinence programs are holding on the the liberation theology of the 1960's sexual revolution. They still believe that if individuals (in this case, teenagers as young as 13) could only "escape" the stifling influences of traditional morality, they will achieve true personal freedom and evolve into higher beings. Of course, that movement has long been discredited as we all have watched what that flat-out wrong world view wrought in our society - abortion on demand, STDs, skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births which lead to poverty and crime, the destruction of the family, growth in government dependency, plummeting moral standards, the devaluing of women, increasing irresponsibility of men and too many broken hearts - just to name a few.
Whether these folks admit it or not there are consequences to these decisions and actions and it is about time they are held to account for their policies.
First, abstinence is seen as a religious....ideaAbstinence until marriage is, in our culture, a predominantly religious idea. It's also not commonly practiced. Teenagers know this, and teenagers are allergic to any form of perceived hypocrisy.
The solution is really simple: in public schools, promote abstinence until adulthood. This gives teenagers (many of whom doubt they will ever get married, or at least suspect it won't be until their later 20s or so) a more achievable goal. It also gives them ammunition against the nay-sayers, who could otherwise say "You don't think Miss Hottschtuff or Coach Plaia are 'abstaining', do you?".
Once they are 18, its no longer the business of any government agency whether or not they are sexually active. By the laws of our nation and the rules of our culture, they are considered capable of making that decision for themselves.
Religious schools and organizations would of course continue to teach and promote the rules of their respective faiths.
This one change of focus would gut nearly all of the anti-abstinence lobby of their arguments.
-Eric
Go ahead and flame away, but I see this as dangerous intrusion on science. Not because I think abstinence isn't the best way to prevent STDs, but because many people won't adhere to it. You don't need a speaker at a scientific conference to tell researchers and medical people that abstinence will prevent STDs. But you do need strategies for reducing STDs among those who won't abstain.
As a doc, I talked myself hoarse telling people to stop drinking excessively, stop smoking, get exercise, lose weight. Guess what? Lots of people didn't and I still needed to know about treating alcohol-related disease, tobacco-related disease, heart disease and high blood pressure. And you can bet there weren't speakers at those conferences to talk about not drinking alcohol to prevent liver cirrhosis - that was a given.
The author has clearly never been exposed to a camp hall meeting of the high priests of Darwin.
In addition to the two you listed, I think there is a third:
Many who oppose abstinence in teenagers are themselves guilty of extremely weak self-control. The more who fall into the lifestyle they chose, the more justification they perceive for their own failures.
Hence the leftist promulgation of "safe" sex, depravity, and homosexuality.
What's the old saying Doc? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?
Would you advocate letting children run with scissors too? Funny how we lose sight of the simplest things.
If people need to be reminded 1000 times that abstinence works, say it 1000 times. It isn't an intrusion on science to say "what goes up, must come down" just because everyone knows it.
And that is what has some people in such a twist.
And in addition to that group, there is a fourth: Those adults who oppose abstinence in teenagers because they want to have sex with those very same teenagers. They're out there, you know...
Wow! Maybe we should just abandon this place and all move to Uganda.
You hit on your second guess. It's an aversion to responsibility. Americans don't want to be responsible for their actions. (Generally speaking)
They have been trained and indoctrinated that "it's" always someone else's fault. Particularly within some demographic groups. Americans believe that it's their "right" to do whatever they want whenever they please, and if there are negative ramifications, then it's not their fault and their entitled (i.e., have rights to) treatment and forgiveness for free.
People smoke for decades and then demand public funds ("free" healthcare) to help them when they get lung cancer.
People eat themselves into obesity and slobdom and then expect others to pick up the tab and blame businesses and other people who may have made fun of them when they were younger or any number of other ridiculous reasons.
People abuse themselves in all kinds of ways, some health related, others not, and then blame manufacturers of products for their own idiocy, risk-taking, and utterly stupid behavior.
People invest their money foolishly and then blame others too. And it's never their fault for being idiots.
New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina are a prime example. If my house was unrestoreable, I'd have moved already and gotten a job elsewhere. I don't care if it was to a place where I didn't know a single person. And critics, spare me the "it's tough to leave an area that you've grown up in" BS. Yeah, it is, but so what! No one ever promised all Americans all sorts of guarantees.
Anyway, these people just sit there, expect our money, and piss and moan about something that isn't anyone's fault. Yet, they make it someone's fault, and least of all those that were the most to blame. Why? Because it's not politically expedient. They live in a flood zone but have no flood insurance. Too poor? Who's fault is that? It's gotta be someone's! Right.
And what of the isolated instance of a home owner losing his home to a tornado, ice storm, etc. Why doesn't FEMA (us financially) jump to pay the next couple of years of their life too? What, does FEMA only pertain to instances where the masses have been inconvenienced by nature? The real tragedy is that many of those people won't budge an inch until someone budges them for them.
Just one example among millions. America's turned from a nation of doers into a nation of people with their hand out. It's only gonna get worse exponentially too once/if the Senate bill, or anything like it, passes.
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