We're all aware that the Bush administration loves to fund abstinence-only education programs that provide high school students with all sorts of misleading information about sex and contraception. But why stop there? Now they've moved on to medical students.
A group called the Medical Institute for Sexual Health has scored $200,000 from the CDC to "develop a sexual-health curriculum for doctors in training." Who's leading the project? None other than Feministing favorite Dr. David Hager, whose hobbies include raping his wife and denying American women over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.
The institute objects to being called "abstinence-only"... Yet the institute mainly discusses condoms to disparage them and sexually transmitted diseases to assert that only abstinence offers reliable protection. Its core message is that "the behavior choices necessary for optimal health are sexual abstinence for unmarried individuals and faithfulness within marriage."
Their language is couched in health and science rather than morals, which might make them more palatable than conventional abstinence-only groups. (They say "nonmarital" pregnancy instead of "out-of-wedlock," for example.) But the message is the same: stay pure if you don't want to die and go to hell.
The Medical Institute secured CDC backing for its med school curriculum by way of a Congressional earmark. (It won't say which members of Congress intervened on its behalf, and they're not jumping to take credit, either.) ... When word got out about the curriculum, sexual-health experts affiliated with the CDC were taken by surprise. The agency had posted no request for proposals. It had put on no competitive bidding process.
While this may be common practice for publilc transportation projects and military projects, it's almost unheard of to award a non-competitive public-health grant.
Unfortunately, the article doesn't detail exactly how or what the Institute will be teaching medical students, or give much background about the importance of CDC curricula in med school. (Any med students out there who know?) But whatever the curriculum looks like, my hope here is that medical students are far too knowledgeable about the facts of life to be swayed by conservative propaganda about condoms and "unhealthy" sex.
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The Medical Institute's website is, shall I say, slick. Their sections on "Nonmarital Pregnancy" refer exclusively to teen pregnancy. Nevertheless, according to them, I'm not an adult (and I'm over 40); I'm still an adolescent because I've yet to make the "final transition to adulthood," marry and become a parent. Here are their words:
"The first steps for teens to take in the transition from adolescence to adulthood are completing their education before leaving the family home, developing a career, and finding a permanent job. After achieving emotional and financial independence, a young adult finds a suitable partner, marries, and establishes an emotionally stable relationship and a financially stable household. The birth of the first child and the transition to parenthood is the final step in the transition to adulthood."
I've achieved all the steps except the last. Guess I'm an educated, emotionally and financially stable adolescent.
But the message is the same: stay pure if you don't want to die and go to hell.
Ahh, yes. Same shit song, different damn toon. These people basically get to the point where what they advocate can only be described as an honor killing.
Err, tune. Heh.
toon was appropriate.
(ah ... perhaps these are the condom stealing culprits, afterall they are in DC)
Looks like it was a way to reward and keep the cash flowing to Dr Hager. Just old claptrap with a new bow.
Yep. You can put lipstick on Dr. Hager, but he's still a pig.
toon was appropriate.
Indeed it was.
as a med student at a southern school, i think all of my classmates know enough to see through the propaganda. unfortunately, plenty of them are conservative (>50%) with their own biases, and i'm afraid this might provide fodder for "morality-informed" patient education, at least in a minority of cases.