And now … this. A report from the National Institutes of Health comes out (well, was forced out, but more about that in a moment) stating that while condoms seem to work in preventing conception and stopping the spread of HIV, there's “insufficient evidence” that they inhibit other STDs. The list includes chlamydia, gonorrhea in women, genital herpes, syphilis, chancroid and the human papillomavirus (HPV). The latter alone affects an estimated 20 million Americans.
“The entire public health model developed by the [Centers for Disease Control] and based on the idea that condoms offer protection, is a lie,” said Dr. Hall Wallis. “The skeleton is now out of the closet.”
Dr. Wallis belongs to the 10,000-member Physicians Consortium, a group that has accused the federal government of suppressing the information contained in the NIH report. He says the CDC has known for years that there’s inadequate evidence for the broad claims made about condoms. Others point out that the NIH report was released solely because of pressure from conservatives and the threat of a Freedom of Information Act request.
“This has all the earmarks of a good old-fashioned medical cover-up,” Dr. John R. Diggs Jr., a consortium member from Massachusetts told Fox News.
The report also has drawn the ire of a former congressman, Tom Coburn (himself a physician), a Republican from Oklahoma. He has written a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson asking him to enforce a law that requires all federal agencies to provide “medically accurate information regarding the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of condoms.”
Adds Coburn: “This report means that when condom use is discussed, it is no longer medically accurate — or legal for the CDC — to refer to sex as ‘safe’ or ‘protected.’”
Proponents of so-called “safe sex” are upset, too — but mostly that the reputation of the almighty condom might be tarnished.
“It is extremely important that the public understand the difference between data being inadequate and condoms being inadequate,” one anonymous official told The Washington Post. Freya Sonenstein, an Urban Institute official, took the glass-half-full perspective: “Given that condoms do protect against some devastating diseases, we certainly need to encourage people to use condoms.” Sounds as if Sonenstein has a shot at being surgeon general someday.
Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, insists that nothing has changed; condoms are still the best thing to happen to a culture addicted to sexual pleasure. (Though they do admit, surprisingly enough, that abstinence “remains the most effective method” of avoiding STDs. I guess that’s so obvious, even they can’t deny it.) Of course, they would rather not see pro-lifers read anything into the NIH report.
“Attempts to use the report to advance so-called “abstinence only” education, which has not been shown to be effective, serves neither public health nor the public interest,” PPFA writes on its website.
The equally pro-abort National Organization for Women (NOW) repeats Planned Parenthood’s pro forma support for abstinence, but then gets down to business. “This approach is not feasible for most of humanity,” they write. “People are sexually active with multiple partners, before, during and after marriage. They are entitled to have accurate information on how best to stay healthy when they are sexually active.”
You thought sex was something reserved by God for marriage? Heavens, no. NOW tells us it’s a “basic right” for all and that engaging in any and all manner of sexual activity is nothing less than “human nature.” Besides, there could be “a public health disaster if the public gets the message that our government thinks that condoms don’t work.”
Tom Coburn takes a more sensible view.
“For decades, the federal government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote an unsubstantiated claim that promiscuity can be safe,” he told the Post. “We all now know for a fact that that is a lie.”
Sorry, safe-sexers, if the truth hurts.
(Paul Gallagher, a father of four, is a freelance writer living near Washington, D.C. This article courtesy of HLI Reports, published by Human Life International.)
