No Sex Please, We're Christians (Bush and STD Research)

[Clay Fink]

From 4/18/03 NYT


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/na...18GRAN.html?th

Another example of how the Bushists are guarding our health and safety...

Judge for yourself.

Certain Words Can Trip Up AIDS Grants, Scientists Say
By ERICA GOODE


Scientists who study AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases say they have been warned by federal health officials that their research may come under unusual scrutiny by the Department of Health and Human Services or by members of Congress, because the topics are politically controversial.

The scientists, who spoke on condition they not be identified, say they have been advised they can avoid unfavorable attention by keeping certain "key words" out of their applications for grants from the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those words include "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" and "needle exchange," the scientists said.

Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the health and human services department, said the department does not screen grant applications for politically delicate content. He said that when the department singles out grants it is usually to send out a news release about them. But an official at the National Institutes of Health, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said project officers at the agency, the people who deal with grant applicants and recipients, were telling researchers at meetings and in telephone conversations to avoid so-called sensitive language. But the official added, "You won't find any paper or anything that advises people to do this."

The official said researchers had long been advised to avoid phrases that might mark their work as controversial. But the degree of scrutiny under the Bush administration was "much worse and more intense," the official said.

Dr. Alfred Sommer, the dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said a researcher at his institution had been advised by a project officer at N.I.H. to change the term "sex worker" to something more euphemistic in a grant proposal for a study of H.I.V. prevention among prostitutes. He said the idea that grants might be subject to political surveillance was creating a "pernicious sense of insecurity" among researchers.

Dr. Sommer said that if researchers feared that federal support for their work might be affected by politics, whether it was true or untrue, it could take a toll. "If people feel intimidated and start clouding the language they use, then your mind starts to get cloudy and the science gets cloudy," he said, adding that the federal financing of medical research had traditionally been free from political influence.

At the National Institutes of Health, for example, grant applications are evaluated and rated by a panel of independent reviewers. The grant application is then given a score.

In another example of the scrutiny the scientists described, a researcher at the University of California said he had been advised by an N.I.H. project officer that the abstract of a grant application he was submitting "should be `cleansed' and should not contain any contentious wording like `gay' or `homosexual' or `transgender.' "

The researcher said the project officer told him that grants that included those words were "being screened out and targeted for more intense scrutiny."

He said he was now struggling with how to write the grant proposal, which dealt with a study of gay men and H.I.V. testing. When the subjects were gay men, he said, "It's hard not to mention them in your abstract."

The titles and abstracts of federally financed grants are available to the public on a computer database maintained by the national institutes. The database, called CRISP, is also frequently read by Congressional staff members on the lookout for research on topics that are of concern to the politicians they work for. Over the years, studies on cloning, abortion, animal rights, needle-exchange programs and various types of AIDS research have been criticized by members of Congress.

But researchers said they feared that the concerns of individual members of Congress were now being taken more seriously by the health and human services department.

John Burklow, a spokesman for the N.I.H., said project directors at the agency were responsible for "providing advice and guidance on myriad issues related to grant applications," but he did not confirm or deny that the project officers were cautioning researchers about the language they used.

He said that the health and human services department "from a management perspective has a right to oversee N.I.H. affairs" but that department officials "have not interfered with the awarding or renewing of any N.I.H. grant."

[Uli]

This is about what this admin is all about: Dole out everybody's money just to the "right" peoples.

[Clay Fink]

More info and background on this:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/23/182233/949

[patricia]

It's almost as if the problems that the health researchers and coping strategists are addressing with their work, will just disappear on their own, if the grant providors just ignore them.
AIDS counselling, needle-exchange programs and birth-control information are legitimate ways of avoiding much bigger problems with dealing with the results of ignorance.
Assuming that people will simply stop risky behaviour is naive.
This puritanical approach is a recipe for disaster, but, undoubtedly will save a few bucks now, the problems arising in the next few years, when this administration doesn't have to cope with the health problems resulting from inaction.
Sad and dangerous, IMO.

[Tom Storer]

The stupidity of this is unfathomable. Say what you like about France, at least public health matters are not decided on the basis of religious bigotry.

[Tanager]

It's not like this is something new - think about our spiking family planning programs b/c of anti-abortion "concerns." I'd argue that this is a continuation of our (IMHO failed) policies wrt. drug addiction, too. Can't be seen as morally soft, nope.

This will do as much for public health as those other policies, too, which is to say, a big lot of nothing at best, and a good amount of (possibly irreparable in any practical sense) harm at worst.

[Al in NYC]

Yeah, but I sho' love my freedom and liberty here in the good ol' USofA...!!

[Ron Thorne]

Sexual freedom is not one of the freedoms ordained by God. C'mon folks, be reasonable.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Ron Thorne
Sexual freedom is not one of the freedoms ordained by God. C'mon folks, be reasonable.

Who can forget the delay by Ronald Reagan's administration, at the outset of the AIDS crisis? Randy Shilts' "And The Band Played On" should be required reading. People were dying and because the available information limited the outbreak to gays, intravenous drug-users and Haitians, NOTHING was done by anyone in that administration, until an "acceptable" victim [Ryan White] was dying from AIDS.
By then, the disease had infected thousands of people.
I see the same moralistic mindset in this administration, with almost predictable consequences.
Perceived "immorality" and it's connection to preventing a disastrous result of inaction, or non-funding is ludicrous. Just not recognizing a problem, doesn't make it go away.

[GoodSpeak]

Sexual freedom?

Hell, how about the freedom to speak out against or protest against the Bush Administration without certain retribution?

How about the Patriot Act civil rights grab?

Sex?

My God people...this should be the LAST thing on our minds right now.



Christianity has got NOTHING to do with it...this is all about supression in the highest regard.





Wake UP!

[bluenoter]

"Sexual freedom" is not the subject of this thread. Matters of life and death are the subject of this thread.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by GoodSpeak
[B]

Hell, how about the freedom to speak out against or protest against the Bush Administration without certain retribution?

I do it at at a Military command wearing a uniform.
Why can't you?
Ok, so I don't parade around the gate with the one guy who is a retired chief but I take shit on a daily basis. And it ain't always fun.

[bluenoter]

Good for you, shrugs.

Remember, just _____ more days and a wake-up!

[Ron Thorne]

Originally posted by bluenoter
"Sexual freedom" is not the subject of this thread. Matters of life and death are the subject of this thread.

Since I'm not certain whether you may have misinterpreted my post #8, or whether I've misunderstood the above response, please clarify, bn. Surely you recognized my tongue-in-cheek ... I hope.

Keep it up, shrugs! You have my respect, my friend, especially considering the "venue".

[bluenoter]

Ron--Both you and GoodSpeak spoke of "sexual freedom" and seemed to consider that the issue at hand.

I may indeed have misunderstood your post. For one thing, I didn't recognize that it was tongue-in-cheek.

But if you wish, please clarify your two-sentence post before I clarify my two-sentence post!

[Ron Thorne]

I must say that I'm more than a little surprised that you didn't realize that my post #8 was tongue-in-cheek, bn.

Let me see if I can clarify, succinctly.

A. I'm one who considers sexual orientation, interest and involvement a purely private matter between two consenting adults, not to be thwarted by bureaucrats or puritanical hangovers.

B. I certainly understand and appreciate the ramifications of HIV/Aids and STDs, though, thankfully I've never experienced either firsthand.

C. Dubbya has repeatedly invoked the name of God recently with respect to freedom(s), so it seemed like a natural (tongue-in-cheek) stepping off point to me ... Christians, sex, Santorum, etc.

The first few words of the thread title (No Sex Please, We're Christians) are no less important than the paranthetical ones, are they?

[Gary Sisco]

I wish they and all True Believers *would* stop having sex.

Unfortunately, they seem to develop these ideas only after having added their genetic material to the pool.

I wish they'd stop it.

[Tom Storer]

Ron, I'm afraid "tongue in cheek" is antithetical to family values, even when it is consensual.

[Gary Sisco]

What is most (well, actually least) interesting to me is why anyone would have sex with these creatures. Gah. I mean, really.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
Ron, I'm afraid "tongue in cheek" is antithetical to family values, even when it is consensual.

Touché, Mr. Storer.

[Gary Sisco]

Shrugs -- I had the same experience, having gone from the New Left to the service during Vietnam. There was also an active GI Rights Movement at the time. None of our activities were "permitted," of course, and many were imprisoned, booted out with bad paper, or purposefully assigned to the most horrible sea duty or land stations available. Which as you know can be as bad as being in prison.

I spent 365 days on the tiny rock of Iwo Jima with 35 other guys *as a volunteer* in order to escape a CO who was a vicious racist and authoritarian asshole, for whom I'd become the main whipping boy.

The trouble today is that people apparently think ideas have no consequences and that free speech exists without a price to be paid if it's a dissenting voice.

But there always is a price to be paid for dissent, in even the freest of societies.

That's why speech is protected to begin with, as a right. No one needs a "right" to be in accord with the dominant views. They're protected ipso facto because they don't challenge anything.

John Ashcroft won't be sending thugs to kick in my door because we agree about the 2nd Amendment, after all. The 2nd Amendment might, on the other hand, prevent them from kicking in my door, or at least hesitating some about it, because there is also sometimes a price to be paid for repression as well.

Ask Somoza, who thought he'd escaped his fate, in exile, until los muchachos sent a rocket up the exhaust pipe of his limo one day. Boom. Everybody dead. Price paid. Bottom line balanced. At least in that instance.