LeStourgeon Online

Abstinence Promotes Childhood Sex

I am both amused and bothered when I catch “news” stories that make a causal connection between rising childhood/teen sexual conduct and “abstinence” education. There are no reliable studies that demonstrate that abstinence education is any less effective than other sex-ed options.

It also matters how you define “abstinence education.” Some programs are abstinence-only, others emphasize a preference for abstinence, others include honest discussions of abstinence with other sex-ed information. Often, reporters unquestioningly include anti-abstinence quotes with no context or definition.

Take a recent example from FOXNews: STDs Run Rampant at Pa. School District, CDC Steps In

It’s estimated that 10 percent of the 3,000 middle and high school students in the Delaware Valley School District in Milford, P.A., are infected with an STD — including one confirmed case of HIV, Times Herald Record reported Friday.

A non-profit health clinic in Milford said they estimate more than 300 students contracted a sexually transmitted disease in the past year. Officials also told the paper students as young as 12 years old reported being sexually active.

Kristen Bruce, a nurse practitioner with the Milford clinic, said most of the cases were the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Bruce told the paper she wasn’t surprised by the numbers, citing a recent CDC study that found at least one in four teenage girls nationwide, between the ages of 14 and 19, has a sexually transmitted disease.

First of all, some basic math. If 1 in 4 teen girls have an STD, then that is 25%. If only 10% of all Delaware Valley students (male and female) have an STD, then the school district is doing something very, very right in their sex-ed department.

But that is not the way Delaware Valley school officials see it:

The Board of Education is currently revising the health curriculum, which places heavy emphasis on abstinence.

Why change what is clearly working? Can we at least have a one-sentence explanation as to how the health curriculum emphasizes abstinence, and why it is relevant to the STD rates? Do the planned changes to the curriculum include eliminating the abstinence portion or will they strengthen the emphasis on abstinence? Aren’t reporters supposed to ask questions and determine facts?

One reason the DV Board of Ed is not patting themselves on the back for a job well done perhaps is because they know the CDC STD Study results are bogus. Seriously, is one out of four teenage girls you know suffering from an STD? In every homeroom of every grade in your local middle- and high-school, there are 5 girls with an STD. During every softball game at your local ballpark, six players are suffering from a sexually transmitted infection. Is this believable? Maybe so in some areas - but nation-wide? Wouldn’t you like some follow-up on how this statistic was calculated? Wouldn’t you like to know why the CDC identified this school district as high-risk at 10% if they really believed 26% of all female teenagers have an STD?

In a nutshell, researchers looked at the data of 600 girls from other sexual infection studies. They lumped everything they could under the category “STD” and did not differentiate between 14-year old freshmen and 19-year old barmaids. Viola! Every girl in junior high is in imminent danger. But there is no background or factual evaluation of the study cited. It is part of a “citation” by a health “official” and thus is simply allowed to stand as factual.

Speaking of officials qualified to dispense medical knowledge related to public policy - do no physicians work for the health clinic? Why is this nurse practitioner especially qualified to serve as a reliable source for questionable CDC information?

The reporter did find one physician who was willing to go on record:

Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious disease specialist at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City…

[Rahimian said,] “There’s no study that abstinence is a highly effective form of prevention for any of these infections.”

(Interesting to note that there are no physicians in all of Pennsylvania. Perhaps that is why nurse practitioners carry so much authority there.)

Taking what we have, where did Dr. Rahimian go to medical school to learn that not having sex was anything other than a “highly effective form of prevention” for sexually transmitted diseases? I admit, I have not been to medical school, so perhaps there is a study that shows that people who don’t engage in sexual activity have equally high rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those people who do engage in sexual activity. For most of us laity, something about this claim just doesn’t add up. Does the reporter not understand the illogic of the good doctor’s statement?

The idea that STDs are rampant because there is just too much abstinence is madness to the Nth degree. This type of unquestioning, uncritical reporting is lunacy in print. Reprinting the unsupported claim that STDs are rampant because of “abstinence education” is shoddy, negligent reporting that (considering the ease with which our present report could have been clarified) borders on outright bias and advocacy journalism.

The real sadness is that so many readers uncritically accept it all as somehow true.

Posted by blestou on June 30th, 2008 — Review, Science, Illustration, News, Culture, Politics