Drudge Report headline: “Condoms Over Abstinence in Obama AIDS Policy…” I can’t imagine the Drudge Report or it’s usual readers view this as a positive development, but those of us committed to rationality certainly do.
The linked story resides at Bloomberg, Condoms Trump Abstinence in Obama Global AIDS Policy:
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama will reverse U.S. family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education, a public-health adviser said.
Public-health policies of President George W. Bush’s $45- billion PEPFAR program have brought AIDS drugs to almost 3 million people in poor countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, more than under any other president. Still, requirements that health workers emphasize abstinence from sex and monogamy over condom use have set back sexually transmitted disease prevention and family planning globally, said Susan F. Wood, co-chairman of Obama’s advisory committee for women’s health.
Wood said that, in recent years, the U.S. government has influenced and “tightly vetted” international organizations to reflect its own policies.
Obama will bring “back a sense of balance and perspective and the use of good science and good medicine in these positions, and not just this narrow, political ideology,” she said.
It’s been a long time, but it is very refreshing to hear about a U.S. President(-Elect) choosing “good science and good medicine” over mere belief. And, despite the political claims to the contrary made in the article by the National Abstinence Education Association, the evidence is compelling: Abstinence Programs Don’t Work.
As for the religious dogma regarding condoms, and to varying degrees other forms of birth control, I think comedian Bengt Washburn said it best:
Saying condoms make teenagers have sex is like saying the headlights on my car make the sun go down.
