Sunday, July 11, 2004

Cosnservative War on Science and Knowledge

July 11, 2004
Experts in Sex Field Say Conservatives Interfere With Health and Research
By MIREYA NAVARRO


or years, Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to
adolescent sexual health, says, it received government grants without much
trouble. Then last year it was subjected to three federal reviews.

James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the reviews were
prompted by concerns among some members of Congress that his group was
using public funds to lobby against programs that promoted sexual
abstinence before marriage. Although that was not the case, Mr. Wagoner
said, the government officials made their point.

"For 20 years, it was about health and science, and now we have a
political ideological approach," he said. "Never have we experienced a
climate of intimidation and censorship as we have today."

Mr. Wagoner is among the professionals in sex-related fields who have
started speaking out against what they say is growing interference from
conservatives in and out of government with their work in research,
education and disease prevention.

A result, these professionals say, has been reduced financing for some
programs and an overall chilling effect on the field, with college
professors avoiding certain topics in their human sexuality classes and
researchers steering clear of terms like sex workers in the title of grant
applications for fear of drawing attention to themselves.

"Programs almost have to hide what they do," said Richard Parker, a
professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
"We have a major challenge ahead of ourselves."

Professor Parker is also a co-chairman of the International Working Group
on Sexuality and Social Policy, an association of researchers and other
professionals, which released a report two weeks ago citing examples of
what it called sex policing under the Bush administration. The report
cited, for example, changes in factual information about sex education and
H.I.V. transmission on government Web sites as well as questioning by
members of Congress about research grants approved by the National
Institutes of Health.

Conservative members of Congress and groups defend the new scrutiny,
saying some research on sexuality is frivolous and a waste of taxpayer
money.

When Representative Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, wanted
to stop the National Institutes of Health from spending $1.5 million on
studies he said were wasteful and unnecessary, he pointed to what he
described as research on the sexual habits of transgender American Indians
and "people's reaction to being aroused when they're in different moods."

The spending had been vigorously opposed by the Traditional Values
Coalition, a group that represents churches primarily. Andrea Lafferty,
executive director of the coalition, said her group's intention was to
challenge research grants that "don't pass the straight-face test."

"There's an arrogance in the scientific community that they know better
than the average American," Ms. Lafferty said.

Mr. Toomey's effort to cancel the grants through legislation failed in a
House vote last July.

Though many professionals in the sexuality field are reluctant to speak
out for fear their government financing will be affected, some have
started denouncing what they regard as attacks on science and public
health.

In May, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and
Therapists called the Bush administration's increased financing of
abstinence-only programs at the expense of comprehensive sex education a
violation of children's human rights.

"Over 40 percent of 15-year-olds are sexually active and they're not
getting information on how to protect themselves from pregnancy and
diseases," Barnaby B. Barratt, the association's president, said in an
interview.

In June, Nils Daulaire, the president of the Global Health Council, an
international group of health care professionals, denounced the Bush
administration's decision this year to drop $367,000 in financing for the
council's annual conference, which he said was the first time the federal
government had withheld sponsorship in more than 30 years.

Mr. Daulaire said in a recent speech in Washington, "It's time to say to
those who would stifle debate and dialogue, and to those in power who
would allow them to prevail, Have you no shame?"

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Bill Pierce,
said the government pulled the financing because the council could not
demonstrate that the money would not go to lobbying efforts, which he said
would be an illegal use of federal money.

But Mr. Daulaire said that anti-abortion groups had objected to the
participation of speakers from the International Planned Parenthood
Federation and other groups that back abortion rights.

Mr. Wagoner, who said there was no reliable evidence that abstinence-only
programs work, said his Advocates for Youth organization had to cut
programs in black colleges and among gay, lesbian and transgender young
people that sought to prevent H.I.V. infections and other sexually
transmitted diseases and suicides.

Mr. Wagoner's group was not the only one to face new reviews. Last year,
the Center for Aids Prevention Studies at the University of California in
San Francisco was among four grant applicants for which Republican members
of Congress sought unsuccessfully to rescind financing after it had
already been approved.

One of the center's studies proposed to look at drug use and other risky
behavior among female Asian sex workers at massage parlors in San
Francisco to develop culturally appropriate efforts to prevent drug abuse
and H.I.V.

"We were amazed that there would be an interference with critical science
that's trying to save people's lives," said Cynthia A. Gomez, a
co-director of the center.

The additional scrutiny is also affecting government agencies. Last
February, a stinging critique of the administration's use of scientific
information by the Union of Concerned Scientists included a testimonial
from Margaret Scarlett, an epidemiologist who left the federal Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in 2001 after 15 years with the agency
because of what she called "an unheard-of level of micromanagement in the
programmatic and scientific activities of the C.D.C."

In an interview, Ms. Scarlett, who now works as a private health
consultant in Atlanta, said she was disturbed by the trends in the agency
to promote condoms as ineffective in preventing disease, to omit
information about contraception on Web sites and to oppose new financing
for comprehensive sex education programs.

But Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the centers, denied any bias, saying that
the agency's decisions were guided by honesty and ethics. "Scientific
integrity is really important here," Mr. Skinner said.

Several House members who have questioned certain grants, like Mr. Toomey,
Joe Pitts, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Mark Souder, Republican of
Indiana, did not return calls, with their aides saying the congressmen
were too busy to comment.

Some professionals in the sex field noted that not all the news was bad.
There is still increasing government financing on sexuality, some said,
and access to information about sex is at an all-time high because of the
Internet. Still, some see long-term damage for the study of sexuality.

"The next generation of researchers is not going to pick this topic,"
Professor Parker of Columbia said. "Students basically say they're afraid
of being a target and not having the possibility of career advancement if
they choose to go into this area."

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