January 3, 2008

GWB does something right for once. Uninformed RRRWers denounce it, of course.

For once pResident Bush pulled his head out of his posterior and approved a beneficial bill.

President Bush on Wednesday signed a $555 billion federal spending bill that includes a provision allowing the city to spend its own money on programs that provide clean hypodermic needles to drug users. Federal spending packages dating back to 1998 had blocked such programs.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s congressional delegate, said the ban has contributed to Washington’s AIDS rate, which is higher than any other major city in the country, according to a recent report on the epidemic.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said in a statement the city plans to include needle exchanges in a larger program to reduce AIDS and HIV infections. About $1 million will be devoted to the exchanges.

Predictably, the RRRW gassbags have nothing but criticism for his decision.

Gary Bauer, president of American Values, decries that no research has been conducted showing that needle exchange programs work.

Actually, if Mr. Bauer knew how to work Google it would have taken him all of 0.25 seconds to discover there has been substantial research showing that needle exchange programs work:

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced today that based on the findings of extensive scientific research, she has determined that needle exchange programs can be an effective part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the incidence of HIV transmission and do not encourage the use of illegal drugs.

Under the terms of Public Law 105-78, the Secretary of HHS is authorized to determine that such programs reduce the transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and do not encourage the use of illegal drugs. The act’s restriction on federal funding, however, has not been lifted.

In a blow to critics of syringe-exchange programs, a new UC Davis study shows that the controversial programs do reduce injection drug users’ HIV risk. The study appears in the July 27 issue of AIDS.

“Our review of the literature should blunt the claims of opponents of syringe exchange, but I’m not optimistic that it will,” said lead author David R. Gibson, associate professor of infectious diseases at UC Davis and a senior scientist at UC San Francisco’s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. “Opponents of syringe-exchange programs can be quite data-resistant.”

UC Davis researchers scoured the medical literature from 1989 to 1999 for studies examining the impact of exchange programs on HIV risk. The search turned up 42 published studies, most of them conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Twenty-eight of the studies concluded that syringe-exchanges reduce HIV risk among injection drug users.

Drug addicts who participate in programs that allow them to exchange an unlimited number of clean syringes are less likely to reuse needles, reducing chances they will spread infectious diseases, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

As a result, syringe exchange programs that limit the number of clean needles that intravenous drug addicts can receive may not be as effective at preventing the spread of HIV and other infectious diseases as programs that do not impose limits, according to the study.

Maybe someone at American Values can teach Gary Bauer how to work Google, eh?

“The problem is not dirty needles, the problem is not unprotected sex,” he points out. “The problem is that large numbers of people in urban areas continue to engage in behavior that is guaranteed to spread disease and make it more likely that if they don’t contract AIDS they’ll contract something else.”…Bauer believes that government subsidizing of “bad behavior” will actually increase its occurrences and leave more people vulnerable to HIV\AIDS.

Research proves Bauer wrong. Empirical research is more reliable than the hate-guided “beliefs” of Bauer and his ilk. That’s why it’s a sound idea to rely on research, and not the rantings of bigots, when making policy decisions.

And since Bauer mentions unprotected sex I feel the need to touch upon one of the RRRW’s bandwagons–that of “abstinence only” sex education. They insist that preaching abstinence while refusing to teach about birth control will keep teens from having sex (because, naturally, teaching them about birth control will cause them to run out and have sex). This is similar to Bauer’s argument that providing clean needles for drug users will actually increase drug use.

Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact
…..
Sexual Behaviors—Six evaluations measured short-term changes in sexual behavior.

*Three of six programs had no impact on sexual behavior (California, Maryland, and Missouri).
*Two of six programs reported increases in sexual behavior from pre- to posttest (Florida and Iowa). It was unclear whether the increases were due to youth’s maturation or to a program’s effect, as none of these evaluations included a comparison group.
*One of the six programs showed mixed results (Pennsylvania).**
…..
*In Erie County, Pennsylvania, researchers found that 42 percent of the female participants were sexually active by the second year of the program.
*In Clinton County, Pennsylvania, data collected from program participants in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades showed a dramatic increase in the proportion of program females who experienced first sexual intercourse over time (six, nine, and 30 percent, respectively, by grade).
*In Minnesota, 12 percent of the eighth grade program participants were sexually active at posttest.
*In Arizona, 19 percent of program participants were sexually active at follow-up. Concurrently, Arizona’s evaluators found that youth’s intent to pursue abstinence declined significantly at follow-up, regardless of whether the student took another abstinence-only class. Eighty percent of teens reported that they were likely to become sexually active by the time they were 20 years old.
…..
*In Clinton County, Pennsylvania, researchers noted that, of those participants that reported experiencing first sexual intercourse during ninth grade, only about half used any form of contraception.
*Arizona’s evaluation team found that program participants’ attitudes about birth control became less favorable from pre- to posttest. They noted that this was probably a result of the “program’s focus on the failure rates of contraceptives as opposed to their availability, use and access.”
…..
Conclusion
Abstinence-only programs show little evidence of sustained (long-term) impact on attitudes and intentions. Worse, they show some negative impacts on youth’s willingness to use contraception, including condoms, to prevent negative sexual health outcomes related to sexual intercourse. Importantly, only in one state did any program demonstrate short-term success in delaying the initiation of sex; none of these programs demonstrates evidence of long-term success in delaying sexual initiation among youth exposed to the programs or any evidence of success in reducing other sexual risk-taking behaviors among participants.

Now the RRRW may wish to continue to live according to their “beliefs”, but I prefer to live according to the evidence. Hopefully the policy makers will follow along as GWB has in this instance.

Posted by: Buffy

Permalink | |