Dubya's abstience problem

You can read the full article at The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com

By Dara Purvis
RAW STORY COLUMNIST

Here’s a logic exercise for you: Let’s say there’s a person who supports abstinence-only sexual education programs, in which students are taught that not having sex is the only way to protect oneself from viral infections, psychological disorders and the disapproval of all of society.

Then there’s another person who thinks that the youths of today don’t know enough about a common sexually transmitted infection, and proposes that information about that infection be added to the fine print on the back of condom packets. How would you say these two positions relate to one another?

If you said the two stances seem to be polar opposites, congratulations, you seem to be able to grasp the differences between opinions. If you said the two positions are the same, I hope you never take a MENSA test. If you said “Yes — that makes perfect sense!” you might just be the president of the United States.

That’s right: Dubya himself — the same guy who put his proposal to double the funding for abstinence-only programs to $270 million in his State of the Union speech — is worried that we don’t know enough about human papillomavirus, or HPV. He’s so worried, in fact, that he would like us to learn about it while perusing that little plastic packet.

Now of course, the Shrub is not exactly doing this out of concern that uninformed Americans are putting themselves at risk. The information proposed is more of a warning that condoms do not prevent all sexually transmitted diseases.

To be clear on this: He’s partially right. He’s telling a half-truth. Some sexually transmitted infections, such as chlamydia or HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), are spread through the exchange of body fluids. Thus, if a condom is used, fluids are not exchanged, and the risk of transmitting such an infection is very low. But other sexually transmitted infections, such as genital herpes or HPV, can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact. Since a condom doesn’t cover all of the skin contacting other skin, it cannot offer complete protection against such infections.

Simply adding a warning that says: “This won’t protect you from the dreaded HPV,” however, is not the complete story either. HPV is a virus with more than 100 viral types, and only about a third of those are sexually transmitted. Because it is a viral infection, there is no cure for HPV, but most infections are asymptomatic, or go away without treatment. In a number of studies, more than 90 percent of cases simply go away within two to five years of infection — and again, many of those cases have no symptoms even while still present.
This is not to say that HPV is a sexually transmitted disease without consequences. The way most people know of HPV already is genital warts: lesions or warts on affected areas caused by certain types of the virus. Yet again, only 1 percent of the adult U.S. population has genital warts, and almost one-third of such cases clear up without any treatment. It is also true that there is a link between HPV infection and cervical cancer — but only 1 in 1,000 women with HPV develops invasive cervical cancer, and cervical cancer is one of the most treatable types of cancer.

Now before all of you worriedly check your little black books to make sure we didn’t meet in any bars recently, let me explain that I know all of this not only because Planned Parenthood’s Web site (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/) has some of the most comprehensive and accurate information availabel on sexually transmitted infections, but also because I worked for Planned Parenthood during college — teaching a comprehensive sexual education program in Los Angeles. Planned Parenthood would spend two full weeks in the classroom running through the “Positive Images” curriculum, and one of the lessons I taught was the day spent on sexually transmitted infections. The curriculum covered six: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, HIV/AIDS, genital herpes and genital warts.

I'll abstain from sex.

Right on!

"Abstinence" not "abstience"