TRENTON, N.J. – Surrounded by data which indicates that the ‘safe-sex’ message is doing little, if anything, to slow the rapid spread of STD’s, senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, is leading the battle to ensure that appropriate warning labels are placed on condom packages in the United States.
Coburn’s spokesperson John Hart indicated that Coburn is currently blocking the nomination of Lester Crawford as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to encourage Crawford to support a law which will ensure more accurate information about the “effectiveness or lack of the effectiveness” of condoms is printed on packages.
Currently U.S. condom packages boast the ‘warning’: “If used properly, latex condoms will help to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV infection (AIDS) and many other sexually transmitted diseases.” Coburn contests that this is less than adequate labeling which gives no indication at all of the grave risks that condom users run of contracting STDs when engaging in sex with infected partners with only a condom for protection.
In 2000 Coburn requested that a National Institute of Health (NIH) panel convene to research and compare published studies on condom effectiveness. Besides reporting an ambiguous and less than adequate ‘significant’ effectiveness for preventing the passage of the fatal AIDS virus, the panel also concluded that current studies into the effectiveness of condoms in preventing many other STDs are inadequate and contradictory.
Unsurprisingly Coburn and his supporters on this issue are being accused of bias. “All of this is ideologically motivated,” said James Trussell, who served on the board of the Planned Parenthood funded Guttmacher instititue. “What they’re really concerned about is people who are not married having sex.”
But, in light of statistics which demonstrate that approximately 500,000 people have died from AIDS in the United States, and another 800,000-900,000 are currently living with HIV, despite years of promotion of ‘safe-sex’, including condom use, the concerns of senator Coburn demand attention. The NIH panel also reported that “approximately 15 million new sexually transmitted infections occur annually in the U.S.”
JJ