Thursday, December 2, 2004 (Charlotte Observer)
This is the link to the article, if you are skeptical of the fact.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=17221
(hopefully the link works.. oh s**t, its a slightly different article but still on the same subject!) I'll have to find the original article link that corresponded to my newspaper! sorry folks!)
Anyway, here is the article, I'm typing it verbatim from my Charlotte Observer newspaper~
"Study: Youths receiving false sex information."
Quote:
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded, abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the “false, misleading, or distorted information” in the programs’ teaching materials, said the report by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., an administration critic who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.
The report reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease – curricula used by at least five programs apiece.
It concluded that two of the curricula were accurate, but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins.
In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex.
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since they began in 1999.
But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, released Wednesday.
In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data. In others, the materials presented opinions as scientific fact. Among the misconceptions Waxman’s investigators cited:
- a 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person.”
- HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
- Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
One curriculum, called “Me, My World, My Future,” teaches that women who have an abortion “are more prone to suicide” and that up to 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the analysis said.
“I have no objection talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,” Waxman said. But “I don’t think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts.”
Those and other assertions are examples of the “false, misleading, or distorted information” in the programs’ teaching materials, said the report by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., an administration critic who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.
The report reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease – curricula used by at least five programs apiece.
It concluded that two of the curricula were accurate, but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins.
In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex.
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since they began in 1999.
But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, released Wednesday.
In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data. In others, the materials presented opinions as scientific fact. Among the misconceptions Waxman’s investigators cited:
- a 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person.”
- HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
- Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
One curriculum, called “Me, My World, My Future,” teaches that women who have an abortion “are more prone to suicide” and that up to 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the analysis said.
“I have no objection talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,” Waxman said. But “I don’t think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts.”
