The Rubber Revolution?

Last November, the DC Department of Health (DOH) launched the Rubber Revolution website.  According to the site:

We want condoms in the hands of the men and women of DC to use for responsible and good sex.

Really?  If condom distribution is working so well in DC, why have rates of HIV infection and sexually transmitted disease infection been increasing?  Certainly not because there have not been enough condoms distributed.

Condom distribution in the District increased from 600,0000 in 2007 to 3.2 million in 2009.  Yet at the same time, the rate of HIV infection increased by 9.2 per cent.  So it appears that there is a correlation between more condoms being distributed and higher HIV infection rates.  Ed Green found the same effect in his research in Africa; using condoms seems to give a false sense of security.  Countries with the highest rate of condom use also have the highest rates of HIV infection.  Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa have the highest rate of condom distribution, and also the highest rate of HIV infection (20 percent to 35 percent among males ages 15 to 49)

Although 42 percent of DC high school students report never having had sex, and 69 percent have not had sex within the previous three months, the District does not spend any money to increase the number of youth who are abstaining from sex.

The vision of ULTRA Teen Choice is that

Every DC youth from upper elementary through high school will receive education about the benefits of abstinence, and will have the opportunity to hear from peers who believe in abstinence.
Accountability relationships, in person or through others means, will be set up between older youth or adults of the same sex who believe in abstinence:
Middle school youth will be STAR (Students Teaching Abstinence & Responsibility) Guides for upper elementary.
High school youth will be STAR Guides for Middle School.
College Youth will be STAR Guides for High School.
This will greatly reduce the rate of HIV, STDs, out of wedlock births, and heartbreak.

A condom-centric approach to stopping HIV and STD infection in DC has been a dismal failure.  It is time to form a youth HIV Prevention Corps that leverages the immense resource of youth who are abstinent or who have returned to abstinence.  Why are we wasting more of taxpayers hard earned money funding programs that continue to promote the same old failed methods?

A Surprising Prevention Success: Why Did the HIV Epidemic Decline in Zimbabwe?

A major study cites behavioral change, i.e. abstinence and especially faithfulness in marriage,spurred on by a fear of death caused by HIV infection and information received from interpersonal relationships, like friends, family and churches for the remarkable decline of HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe from 29% in 1997 to 16% in 2007

This mirrors the research of Ed Green about Uganda. It is interesting to note that little credence is given to the protective ability of condoms, although that is still presented as an "evidence based" method, although there is no evidence to support increasing condom distribution as a prevention method.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000414;jsessionid=52D9029E44F1876D3BC759B4F634CC8D.ambra01

HIV/AIDs epidemic continues to spread

The 2009 DC Epidemiology report says that there was a nine percent increase in reported cases of HIV/AIDS in just one year. Although less people developed AIDS, the last stage of HIV disease, that does not address the main issue.
The main issue is education to prevent HIV/AIDS infection. A recent study has shown conclusively that programs that emphasize abstinence from sex, unlike so called "comprehensive" programs that mostly emphasize using condoms, reduce the number of teens having sex. Why then does Washington, DC continue to push ever more condoms, even now promoting female condoms, when no study has ever shown that so called "comprehensive" sex education programs increase the rate of consistent condom use among the general population.
We need to provide all youth beginning in 6th grade with abstinence centered education that clearly teaches the physical, social, and emotional consequences of sexual activity outside of a mutually faithful monogamous relationship, i.e. marriage. Nothing else will do justice for the next generation of our leaders. As your next At- Large Councilmember I will work diligently with my colleagues to fund abstinence centered programs for all DC youth.

New Study Shows Abstinence Programs Work

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday Feb. 1 in a landmark study that could have major implications for U.S. efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Currently, the District of Columbia does not allocate any funding for abstinence programs.

Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.

The findings are the first clear evidence that an abstinence program could work, according to the Washington Post. However, several other studies have shown efficacy in reducing sexual activity, such as these, but this study is considered to be more definitive.

"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used. Read More
Source: The Washington Post Feb. 2, 2010 with additional content by Richard Urban

HIV can be stopped

The Washington Post wrote an editorial on December 16 titled HIV/AIDS: The incurable epidemic. HIV can be stopped. If you have sex only with one person who is not infected, and they have sex only with you, you will never be infected, outside of the extremely remote possibility that you could receive a contaminated blood transfusion. Why is sexual abstinence and reduction of the number of sexual partners not emphasized in the Post article.
The promotion of condom use throughout Africa and in the United States and right here in Washington, DC has been a dismal failure. It has not stopped the spread of HIV/AIDS. In fact, Washington DC has the highest rate of HIV infection in the United States. No program anywhere in the world has ever achieved a generalized high rate of condom use across the entire population. Yet programs that emphasize abstinence, such as that adopted in Uganda have been effective.
Sexual abstinence outside of a mutually faithful monogamous relationship and partner reduction must become the main focus of preventing HIV/AIDS.

Challenging the Scientific "Priesthood" on World AIDS Day

Today's (12/1/09) New York Times article by John Tierney, "E-Mail Fracas Shows Peril of Trying to Spin Science," points to the self-serving efforts of British climate scientists to block perfectly legitimate requests by other scientists to see the raw climate data on which their public proclamations about man-made global warming were based as well as their "plotting revenge against those who question the dangers of global warming" and planning "retaliation against the journal and the editor" who dared to publish a skeptic's paper.

As any 9th grade science student knows, silencing of other points of view and ad hominem attacks are the opposite of the open debate and access to raw data that is essential to true scientific debate and progress.

But, on World AIDS Day, it's important for us to realize that man-made global warming is not the only sphere where official dogma reigns, or where suppression/misrepresentation of data and alternative viewpoints are practiced.

Consider the suppression by leading journals and UNAIDS of reports and articles by researchers like Ted Green and Norman Hearst showing that the condom strategy for reducing the spread of AIDS in generalized epidemics such as exist in sub-Saharan Africa was failing and that the ABc approach emphasizing abstinence for youth and monogamy/partner reduction among the sexually active was having lifesaving success in reducing the prevalence of HIV infections in Uganda by two thirds (from 15% to 5%). The stubborn and blind refusal to consider a new approach because of political or ideological agendas in the U.S. and at the United Nations has contributed to the deaths of millions of Africans.

The recent CDC report "Group-based Interventions to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy, HIV, and Other STDs," which stated the effectiveness of programs that include condom instruction, is another example of agenda-driven science, released just in time to affect proposals in Congress to cut funding for abstinence education programs and to shift it to "evidence-based" programs that promote condom use.

The CDC refuses to release the underlying statistics for public scrutiny by other scientists. Sound familiar?

In the supposedly open and democratic West, which prides itself on basing public policy on evidence, reason and legitimate science, that shouldn't be acceptable, but most of the media docilely accepts pronouncements from experts whose proclamations we are supposed to accept on faith. Shame on the "scientific priesthood," shame on much of the media and shame on us for allowing unexamined claims and half-truths to endanger the physical and emotional health and lives of youth in this country and around the world.

Richard Panzer, Ph.D.
Moderator and Director
Free Teens USA
(http://www.freeteensusa.org)
(http://www.freeteensyouth.com)
(http://culturemachine.com)
(http://thewaronintimacy.com/twoi/?e=freeteensusa)
************

HPV vaccine requirement in Washington DC should be repealed

Over 12,000 adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine have been reported, including 32 deaths and almost 1000 serious reactions, like blood clots, seizures, and heart attacks. This shot is unnecessary and dangerous. Since, HPV is only transmitted through sexual intercourse, why is Washington DC reqriing 6th grade girls to get this vaccine? This policy needs to be repealed by the city council NOW! (One note about the article below: condoms are not effective against preventing HPV)
Study Reveals Serious HPV Vaccine Problems: Fainting, Blood Clots, Death Among Risks
by S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) At first glance, a study just published in the August 19th edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is yet another whitewash job about the safety of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus recombinant vaccine --better known as Gardasil, the genital human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Licensed in June of 2006 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for girls and young women between the ages of nine and 26, the enormously hyped and advertised vaccine is designed to prevent infection with four types of HPV: types 16 and 18 can cause cervical cancer and types 6 and 11 are the most common types of genital warts.

The JAMA report says that the Gardasil adverse events reported have been mostly consistent with data gathered before the vaccine was considered safe enough to be widely administered to young girls. But a close reading shows some disturbing additional facts.

Just as NaturalNews has consistently reported, the vaccine has caused an extraordinary number of adverse side effects (http://www.naturalnews.com/026722_G...). And now comes word from the JAMA report that the HPV vaccine has unexpectedly caused episodes of fainting and life-threatening blood clots. In fact, in a statement to the media, these events were called "disproportional" -- meaning these side effects are anything but rare. What's more, among the 12,424 adverse reaction reports about the HPV vaccine, 772 (6.2 percent) were serious and included 32 reports of death.

Other problems caused by the vaccine include local site reactions, skin rashes, nausea, dizziness, headaches and even Guillain-Barre syndrome (a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system sometimes causing paralysis) and anaphylaxis (hypersensitivity reaction that can cause sudden death). As just reported by CBS news, the teenage daughter of physician Scott Ratner and his wife was one of the unfortunate girls who became severely ill with a chronic autoimmune disease, myofasciitis, after her first dose of Gardasil. Dr. Ratner told CBS his daughter was so ill with the neurological problem "..she'd have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination."

One the lead researchers for Gardasil has also gone public this week, telling CBS news there is no data showing that the vaccine even remains effective beyond five years. That means that if a ten year old girl is given the vaccine and subjected to possibly serious and even life-threatening side effects, the vaccine may offer her no protection at all when she hits her teens or young adulthood.

What makes the debate about Gardasil crazy to begin with is that studies have shown 70 to 90 percent of people with HPV naturally clear the virus from the body within two years of infection -- with no help from drugs or vaccines. So the most effective protection from problems caused by HPV is to avoid being infected by the multiple strains of HPV by not engaging in promiscuous, unprotected-by-condoms sex (the virus is transmitted sexually and condoms do not offer 100 percent protection) and by keeping your body's immune system strong and healthy through good nutrition, exercise and exposure to sunlight.

In an editorial accompanying the JAMA study, Charlotte Haug, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., of The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association in Oslo expressed her concerns about the aggressively promoted Gardasil vaccine: "Whether a risk is worth taking depends not only on the absolute risk, but on the relationship between the potential risk and the potential benefit. If the potential benefits are substantial, most individuals would be willing to accept the risks. But the net benefit of the HPV vaccine to a woman is uncertain. Even if persistently infected with HPV, a woman most likely will not develop cancer if she is regularly screened..."

For more information:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009...
http://www.indiana.edu/~health/hpv.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/025613_c...