CDC: RARE INFECTION A RISK TO GAY, BISEXUAL MEN IN US

By Paul Simao

Thu 28 October, 2004 22:29

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A rare sexually transmitted disease that is spreading among
gay and bisexual men in Europe could
be poised to surface in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention said on Thursday.

The CDC, a federal agency that monitors epidemics and other health threats,
urged doctors and clinics across the nation
to be prepared to diagnose and treat gay and bisexual men infected with
Lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV).

It issued the advice after receiving reports of recent outbreaks in the
Netherlands. The northern European nation has
uncovered 92 cases of LGV dating back to 2003. It typically sees fewer than five
cases per year.

The infection is caused by specific strains of chlamydia, a sexually transmitted
disease, and usually marked by genital
ulcers, swollen lymph glands and flu-like symptoms.

However most of the men recently infected in the Netherlands developed
gastrointestinal bleeding, inflammation of the
rectum and colon and other problems not often associated with the infection or
other sexually transmitted diseases.

Belgium, France, Sweden and Britain also have reported infections. It is not
known whether America is seeing a similar
surge because U.S. doctors are not required to report the infections to local
health departments.

"We expect it's a question of time before we see cases appearing here," said Dr.
Stuart Berman, chief of the
epidemiology and surveillance branch in the CDC's division of STD prevention.
"This is an early warning."

Although LGV can be cured by a three-week course of antibiotics, U.S. health
officials could be hard pressed to keep a
lid on the spread of the infection because it is uncommon in industrialized
nations and easily misdiagnosed.

Efforts to combat the disease also are complicated by the tendency of some gay
and bisexual men to engage in high-risk
sexual behavior.

Dutch authorities found that a large number of the men recently infected with
LGV had participated in sex parties and
unprotected anal intercourse in the year before getting sick. Many also were
infected with HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS.

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3. SCIENCE, IDEOLOGY CLASH ON AIDS PREVENTION

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

These questions are at the heart of the controversy over the government's
HIV-prevention policy:

1) Can teenagers be persuaded to abstain from sex until marriage?

2) Do condoms effectively prevent sexually transmitted diseases?

3) Has the right balance been struck in the funding of abstinence and
condom-based programs?


CONTROVERSIAL HISTORY


AIDS-prevention policy has provoked stormy political debate in every
administration, almost from the moment the disease
emerged in the early 1980s

"I used to say that we're like the body of a bird that's being beaten up by the
right and left wings," says Jim Curran, who
led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's AIDS research during the
Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

During the Reagan years, vigorous opposition from conservatives in Congress
almost scuttled an $18 billion survey of
teenage sexual behavior involving 24,000 students in grades 7 to 11.

Bernadine Healy, then director of the National Institutes of Health and now a
columnist for U.S. News & World Report,
says the survey has since become a darling of conservatives, because it helps
NIH and other organizations track teen
sexual behavior.

"You want health agencies to have some independence from the political process,"
Healy says. President Clinton refused
to pay for programs that would allow drug addicts to exchange used hypodermic
syringes for sterile ones. This was even
after the head of every federal science agency signed off on a memo stating that
he or she had reviewed all relevant
research and concluded that the programs would prevent AIDS without encouraging
drug use.

"The (opposition to) needle-exchange was straight politics," says Donna Shalala,
former secretary of Health and Human
Services and now head of the University of Miami.

Researchers say the science is clear. "Are condoms effective? Give me a break,"
says James Curran, dean of Emory
University's Rollins School of Public Health and a pioneering AIDS researcher.
"They've been effective for 50 years.
They're not perfect, but they work."

But effectiveness isn't the only issue. AIDS prevention, because it necessarily
involves sexual behavior, carries profound
moral and ideological import, especially where adolescents are concerned. The
tension between science and ideology
has emerged as one of the central issues of the 2004 presidential campaign.
President Bush and Democratic challenger
John Kerry have sparred in particular over the integrity of White House
representations of the science involved in stem
cell research and verification of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Some of the
nation's most prominent scientists
became activists this year.

The debate over the best approach to AIDS prevention has taken a back seat to
these highly publicized questions. But
behind the scenes, the debate rages on.

Research shows that teenagers who pledge to stay abstinent until marriage
typically don't. Although they do hold off
longer than many of their peers, they're less likely to use condoms and as
likely to get sexually transmitted infections.

When used consistently, studies show, condoms are 98% effective for preventing
pregnancies, nearly 90% effective for
preventing HIV and highly effective for stopping the spread of syphilis and
gonorrhea. They also can block chlamydia and
human papillomavirus.

The Bush administration interprets the scientific findings differently from
public health experts, asserting that condoms
cannot eliminate all risk from sex with multiple partners. Bush and his
supporters in Congress stand on the virtues of
abstinence.

Federal regulations now require that government-funded organizations providing
AIDS prevention services point out
condom-failure rates to their clients.

"The problem on issue after issue is that the Bush administration puts ideology
ahead of science," Kerry says. He has
been a vocal proponent of programs that support condom use, along with
abstinence and faithfulness within marriage.

Last year, President Bush pledged to become the nation's leading AIDS advocate
by promising to supply $15 billion over
five years for treatment and prevention in the 15 hardest-hit countries. Some
government health experts initially expressed
frustration at the slow pace of the administration's fulfillment of that
promise.

Eve Slater, former assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, is one of
them. "With each passing day, we're
losing some very important battles," says Slater, a Republican who resigned in
February 2003.

Unhappy AIDS experts found that the legislation required that one-third of AIDS
prevention money go to abstinence-only
programs, many of them faith-based.

Abstinence funding has flooded the coffers of some struggling organizations. For
example, IRS records show that a group
called Teen-AID in Spokane, Wash., got $784,868 in federal money in 2002, up
from zero in 1998.

Bush believes condoms aren't always the best solution for the prevention of
sexually transmitted diseases. "We were
buying condoms for STD prevention, and we haven't succeeded," says Megan Hauck,
deputy policy director for the
Bush-Cheney campaign.

The administration has paid for a study on the effectiveness of abstinence-only
programs, Hauck says. "There isn't any
evidence comparing abstinence programs with comprehensive sexual education," she
says. "We feel that teaching kids
an abstinence message is the only foolproof way to keep them from pregnancy and
disease."

Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
maintains that charges of bias against
science are overblown. "We are absolutely committed to making decisions on
HIV-prevention policy on the basis of
science," she says. Yet she made headlines last year when she handed a
poster-size check for $363,935 to abstinence-
only Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ. This fight is just part of a larger war,
many scientists say.

The Union of Concerned Scientists obtained the signatures of more than 5,000
scientists across the political spectrum,
including 48 Nobel Prize winners, on a letter accusing the administration of
twisting science to achieve ideological goals.

Ronald Numbers, medical historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
grandson of two fundamentalist
preachers, says science has been steadily losing its gravitas in the political
arena over the past decade or so.

"Science is portrayed as just another ideology," he says. "If you look at what
critics of science say - academic and
religious critics alike - they converge on the same notion: Science is just one
more way of looking at the world, and it
shouldn't have the cultural authority it has been granted."

Says the Bush campaign's Hauck: "There's an issue of effectiveness and an issue
of what we should be teaching our
kids. When you take people's money and make decisions on what to fund with it,
you have to consider morals and ethics
in addition to science. It's a combined equation."

Can the two factions find common ground?

"Personally," Numbers says, "I think it would be very difficult."

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4. FAMILY ADVOCATE CONDEMNS MISGUIDED ILLINOIS CONDOM HANDOUTS

By Jim Brown

November 3, 2004

(AgapePress) - An Illinois pro-family activist is expressing outrage over the
state's distribution of flavored condoms.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that since January the Illinois Department of
Public Health has spent $115,000 in funds
provided by the Bush administration on condoms -- 360,000 of which are flavored.
The agency claims the orange, grape,
lemon, and cherry condoms will help curb the state's high rates of syphilis and
other sexually transmitted diseases.

But Pete LaBarbera with the Illinois Family Institute feels the state is
encouraging homosexuals to continue in immoral
behavior, rather than concentrating on warning them of the health risks to which
they are exposing themselves. "There's
a big problem in the homosexual community in Chicago with syphilis," he says,
"so rather than tell the homosexual
community, 'Do not engage in this dangerous behavior,' they are giving them
condoms to entice them to use them for oral
sex."


The IFI spokesman is adamant that the public should not have to foot the bill
for condoms that have the primary effect of
promoting an unhealthy and immoral lifestyle. "It's just outrageous," he says,
"and taxpayers should not be paying for
this."

LaBarbera contends that the City of Chicago, in particular, is so "messed up"
that officials there are actually working with
"bathhouses," homosexual establishments that he calls "places of perversion," in
order to pass out condoms and other
so-called safe-sex materials. He says liberals' idea of helping homosexuals is
"to give them condoms for their perverse
activity" rather than helping them to stop doing it.

"That's what we should be doing," the pro-family activist asserts. "We shouldn't
be encouraging this behavior at all."

LaBarbera is also concerned the flavored condom distribution will entice more
young people to engage in risky sexual
activity. He believes the state's handout of these contraceptive barrier devices
will undermine efforts to promote sexual
abstinence among young people.

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5. TEXAS AMENDS TEXTBOOKS TO DEFINE MARRIAGE

Gay lobbyist calls the changes 'irresponsible'

By Jim Cummins

Correspondent

NBC News

Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET Nov. 5, 2004


DALLAS - Members of the Texas state school board say the overwhelming rejection
of gay marriage in 11 states on
Tuesday justifies what they did Friday.

"I think they spoke on Election Day - even Oregon - they all have passed the
Defense of Marriage Act," says school
board member Terri Leo. "I think the country has spoken."

Even before the election, the Texas school board urged publishers to change the
new health textbooks to reflect
traditional marriage.

Some of the changes in one textbook:

ú Old text: "When two people decide to marry..."

ú New text: "When a man and a woman decide to marry..."

ú Old text: "When two individuals understand that marriage is their individual
goal..."

ú New text: "When a man and a woman understand that marriage is their individual
goal..."

The Texas State Board of Education is mostly Republican, but the vote to amend
the textbooks was almost unanimous.

Republican Leo, of Houston, says the changes were necessary because Texas law
prohibits the state from recognizing
same-sex unions.

"Marriage has been defined in Texas," says Leo. "So it should also be defined in
our textbooks that we use as marriage
between a man and a woman."

But Randall Ellis, with the Lesbian and Gay Rights lobby of Texas, says the
amendments are just part of a larger right-
wing agenda.

"On the issues of gays and lesbians and the definitions of marriage, it was
petty, reckless, irresponsible ... just plain
wrong," says Ellis.

Texas is the second-largest buyer of textbooks in the country, so those same
amended texts will be used by public school
students in dozens of other states.

"We really write the books for the rest of the nation," says Leo.

But Ellis believes the new texts send the wrong message.

"There is a group of gay and lesbian students that go to school here in the
United States that are using those books and
they feel alienated when the information is not as appropriate for them as well
as their peers," says Ellis.

The new, amended, health class textbooks will be used in Texas classrooms
beginning next school year.