Mark Vakkur, MD

Sexual Behavior Worldwide

Florida's Scarlet Letter Law Forces Women to Publicly Reveal (Via Newspaper Ads) Their Sexual Partners

Teenage Sexual Behavior Teen Sex Article:

• 61% of high school seniors report having had sexual intercourse;
• overall 46% of high school (9th- 12th grade) students said they've had sexual intercourse;
• 33% of 9th-graders have had sex;
• The religious right advocates abstinence until marriage as the norm, but only 10% of the American population behaves this way (90% engage in what Christians refer to as "premarital sex").
• The United States has consistently mixed religion and education, blocking at every level access to unbiased, accurate information about sexuality, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and birth control; if imposition of a religious agenda worked, then we would have lower rates of sexual transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, and abortion than European countries, particularly Scandinavian countries, where frank discussion of sexuality with teenagers is the norm:
• As it turns out, the opposite is true: the United States rates of sexual transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, and abortion are higher than in any industrialized country and several orders of magnitude higher than in Scandinavian countries.
• The overwhelming majority of American parents support accurate sexual education (81%), yet a vocal minority continues to influence public policy.

Abstinence-Only Sexual "Education":

 No Sperm Left Behind! - Health Care Coverage for Sperm but Not Women [spoof]

The Bush administration has pulled a sex education web site, and edited a condom information site to emphasize failure rates only.

Former Attorney General Satcher stated that thrusting ideology onto public health departments that have taken decades to build their reputation may ultimately discredit them as a source of information.

Only 1 abstinence-only study showed effectiveness, one that asked students to take a virginity pledge; however, those who broke the pledge were less likely to use contraceptives than sexually active students who didn't take the pledge.

"Jan. 22, 2003 -- In two recent episodes, public health officials in the Bush administration have removed public health information about preventing sexually transmitted diseases and the effects of abortion on the risk of breast cancer. We present the original and the revised versions here.

"BREAST CANCER

"The National Cancer Institute Web site currently has posted on it a fact sheet titled "Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer." It replaced a fact sheet titled "Abortion and Breast Cancer," which was removed from the Web site in 2002.

("You'll need Adobe Acrobat to read each of the following files.)

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/roevwade/cancer1.pdf

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/roevwade/cancer1.pdfRead the original document.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/roevwade/cancer2.pdf

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/roevwade/cancer2.pdfRead the revised document.

"Condoms
"For several years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a fact sheet for the general public called "Condoms and Their Use in Preventing HIV Infection and Other STDs" on its Web site. The new fact sheet is labeled "Fact Sheet for Public Health Personnel" and is titled "Male Latex Condoms and Sexually Transmitted Diseases." It stresses abstinence as the best way to avoid problems and stresses that condoms often fail to prevent disease and pregnancy, citing unspecified "epidemiological studies." HHS Deputy Secretary Claude Allen says the administration "is committed to putting out the very best and the most accurate scientific information and then letting the American public decide how they choose to use that information."