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May 15, 2006
There is no
doubt that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is involved
in heroics on a daily basis. At the mention of the CDC, the mind
conjures up pictures of people in white body suits racing across the
world to halt the Ebola virus, sweeping Congressional offices for
anthrax spores or carrying dead birds to the lab for studies on the
mutations of the bird flu virus.
Click on the CDC
Special Pathogens Branch web page, and you will find a long
list of deadly and dangerous viruses ready to assault your body and do
serious harm. Filoviruses, Hendra Virus, Hantavirus, Nipah Virus…you
get the picture. We are lucky to have the CDC.
However, like
all people and all organizations built on people, the CDC is not
perfect. It is courageous, yes. And it is political, yes.
The Ebola virus
is deadly. Thankfully, though, it is an equal opportunity attacker.
An Ebola virus can spy any rather ordinary person just walking down
the street…and attack. Suddenly you have an epidemic. No politics
are involved. We, in turn, attack the virus with full vigor:
quarantines, isolation wards, protective gear complete with masks and
goggles.
The HIV virus is
deadly. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t need to attack. Instead,
it enters the body with a special human invitation through sexual acts
that send shivers of ecstasy through a person right along with the
virus. Most unfortunately, using sex as its entry portal, the HIV
virus …and the long list of over 25 other sexually transmitted
infections…is political.
From the very
beginning in the 1980s when the HIV virus was first identified,
politics took control of the CDC and healthcare system’s strategies in
fighting AIDS. The CDC was beset from all sides. Panic gripped the
nation. How would we stop this deadly disease?
Many mysteries
surrounded the virus, making the formulation of a public health policy
difficult. Yet one thing was crystal clear. Men practicing
homosexual sex were at risk and in danger.
In the 1980s,
the CDC chose a course of action partly medical and largely
political. To avoid offending gay activists, it did not invoke its
prerogative to close down gay bath clubs and condemn promiscuous and
clearly risky sexual behaviors. Instead, it held out its departmental
hand with a truckload of condoms, coining the clearly non-medical nor
non-scientific term, safe sex.
This satisfied
the desires of a country weaned on free sex from the 60s. It
also placated a main stream media that was busily crafting the finer
points of politically correct news writing based on redefining and
outlawing words that offended liberal sensibilities. Best yet, it
delighted free sex advocates who touted the first billboard for Trojan
condoms as a modern benchmark of enlightenment.
Twenty years
later, we are struggling to deal with a major health crisis that has
taken hold of our children. The effects of the free sex revolution
have finally forced the CDC to retract promises of safe sex.
Yet, the retraction is half-hearted and imbued with politics.
The same main
stream media that sharpens its teeth on the bones of right-wing,
radical, religious, fanatical victims it has been throwing to the
lions for twenty years cannot be trusted to illuminate the dialogue on
sexual behaviors with truth. Even today, journalists continue to
describe risky sexual practices with the medically inaccurate term
safe sex. “Enlightened” journalists have repackaged promises of
safe sex in ambiguous (and politically safe) terminology such as
safer sex and protected sex.
Why is this
important for the average citizen to understand? Because it is the
foundation for confusion based on the use of politics to script a
medical response to the medical crisis facing our children.
Adolescent sex.
What is the
politically correct method of talking sex to our children?
Unfortunately for our children, the lead agency in politically correct
medicine today is an agency that has every reason to know better…the
CDC.
Copyright © 2006 Jane Jimenez
Next week:
CDC: One Eye Closed
September 26, 2005
The Gift of Fear
See Archives
for past editorials.
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