by Jim Brown & Jerry Bacon
An expert on sexually-transmitted diseases and abstinence education says public school teachers continue to receive and dole out misinformation about condoms.
Dr. John Whiffen, Board Chairman of the National Physicians Center has been a practicing surgeon for more than thirty years and praises the effectiveness of abstinence-only education programs.
The Harvard Medical School graduate says school teachers are often taught that abstinence is strictly a moral or religious message, when it is also a medical and biological message.
Whiffen points out that the fact that the medical message and the traditional morality message happen to agree seems overlooked. Instead, they are told that abstinence is only a “religious” message and that is passed on to the kids.
Secondly, teachers are told that because condoms are “effective” at reducing STDs, and because so many kids today are sexually active, they have to be given condoms.
But Whiffen argues that children need to be told that even if they wear a condom, they are providing themselves minimal protection against such diseases like Human Papilloma Virus which causes cervical cancer.
Dr. Whiffen offers this simple analogy: “If I knew my teenaged son was going to drive my car one-hundred miles-per-hour down a busy highway, I'd want him to buckle up his seat belt because there is a slight chance that he would increase his chances of surviving an accident.”
“But,” Whiffen continues, “I would be much better off telling my son that he would be absolutely foolish to drive a car that fast because of the danger it poses to him. I would tell him that even with his seatbelt on, he is very likely to die.”
Dr. Whiffen says instead, teachers need to be telling their students that most of their classmates are not sexually active and that condoms are, in truth, woefully ineffective in preventing STD's or pregnancy prevention.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)