Government Seeks a Good Balance of Right and Wrong

Science is not interested in balance, it is a quest for knowledge. One belief can be superior to another, according to some well-established guidelines -- it accords better with the empirical data, it explains more phenomena more thoroughly than the competing belief, it is parsimonious, it is self-consistent and consistent with other known facts. Once it was established that the earth went around the sun, there was no need any more to maintain "balance" by keeping the sun-goes-around-the-earth theory alive. It was wrong, and it was dropped.

Now there is this idea of abstinence-only education. The religious nuts like it, and the people they have elected into power know that supporting it will get them more of the nut-vote. Scientists who look at it don't see anything positive about it. Hey, that's just the way it is, sometimes an idea doesn't work. So then you put the flat-earthers on a geophysics panel. Don't you?

The CDC were going to have a panel on abstinence education at a conference on STDs. You know, there would be peer-reviewed presentations, that sort of thing.

Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed a congressman to include two abstinence-only proponents, bypassing the scientific approval process.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House subcommittee on drug policy, questioned the balance of the original panel, which focused on the failure of abstinence-until-marriage programs. In e-mail to Health and Human Services officials, his office asked whether the CDC was "clear about the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective."

Last week the title of the panel was changed and two members were replaced. One of them was a Penn State student who was going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates. Abstinence debate roils talk on STDs; PSU student eliminated from panel

This goes beyond simply recommending something, or submitting papers to the conference. In fact, these guys didn't even submit their papers, the congressman just ordered the conference to take them.

Scientists have complained about increasing government interference. Last year, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration officials told coordinators of a conference on suicide prevention to remove the words gay, lesbian and bisexual from its program and add a session on faith-based suicide prevention.

This was the first time, conference organizers said, that a single politician had so clearly interfered and achieved such dramatic results. The concern, they said, was that studies on sexual behavior would not be made public if they jarred with the administration's views on abstinence and other public-health issues.

"At the CDC, they're beside themselves," said Jonathan Zenilman, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and conference organizer. "These people aren't scientists; they haven't written anything. The only reason they're here is because of political pressure from the administration."

Neither of the new speakers -- Patricia Sulak, an ob/gyn and director of the Worth the Wait program, and Eric Walsh, a California physician -- went through the peer-review process required of other participants, although CDC officials did not explain why. Both panelists were funded by the HHS, although others said they were told they had to pay their own way.

This article in Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times talks a little bit about the political issue ivolved.

Sex education has been a hot-button topic between public-health officials and politicians for years. The president's 2007 budget request increases abstinence-program funding to $204 million, up $22 million from 2006, according to Bruce Trigg, who heads an STD program in New Mexico and is one of the panel members.

In most of these programs, Trigg said, it is mandated that when condoms are discussed, it is only to point out failure rates and how they are not 100 percent effective.

Condom use does prevent pregnancy and STDs, health officials say, and if people aren't encouraged to use them, they will be at risk for both.

Abstinence-only proponents say it is hard to measure their programs because often other sex education is involved. But Zenilman said the conference panel focused on the problems with abstinence programs because there are no credible data -- and no credible applicants offering otherwise.

"We've spent $1.2 billion over a 25-year period on abstinence-only programs. Shouldn't we have one study that shows that they work?" asked William Smith, director for public policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. He is no longer on the panel.

Just like magic. He said that and ... "he is no longer on the panel."

Oster was called last week and told she would not be on the panel, where she was going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates.

"It absolutely scares me," she said, "that there's this pressure to eliminate viable research from a professional conference."

Later, a representative from the office of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.) criticized her work in an e-mail message.

Coburn spokesman John Hart questioned why the CDC would present data that contradict the administration's policy.

"I'm not suggesting that their views shouldn't be debated," he said, "but should federally funded tax dollars be used to do that?"

The new panel is titled "Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth."

This kind of thing scares me more than anything that's going on today. Well, actually, I'm more profoundly scared about the long-term effects this administration is having on the economy, but in the short run, the decay of reason is most deplorable. Can you imagine anyone suggesting that the CDC -- the Centers for Disease Control, who we count on to set intelligent policies about our health -- should only consider data that do not "contradict the administration's policy?"

And the fact that the American people sit there and accept the erosion of common sense ...