The NIH gets born again

At the behest of the Traditional Values Coalition and several Republican lawmakers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reevaluating 157 grants awarded to scientists to study AIDS and human sexuality.

NIH Questions AIDS, Sex Attitudes Grants
Dr. Liana Clark says that the government questioning the value of her federally funded study of birth control use among teenagers has her reconsidering her decision to seek another grant for a similar project.

"I just keep thinking that this is a bad nightmare and I'm actually going to wake up from all this," said Clark, a physician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who received a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) for her project and to earn an advanced degree.

Clark said that NIH last week asked her to describe the usefulness of her study of teenagers' misconceptions about birth control. She had hoped for another NIH grant to study whether fears about being unable to get pregnant in the future discourage women from using birth control now.

"If politics is going to play a role in this, how can I go there?" Clark said.

NIH is telephoning 157 such researchers who were awarded grants for projects on AIDS (news - web sites) and sexual practices in response to complaints from the conservative Traditional Values Coalition (news - web sites).

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the phone calls from to the scientists are "sending a dangerous message" that research is being subverted to an ideological agenda.

NIH spokesman John Burklow said his agency simply was responding to a request from Republican lawmakers who were given a list of the research grants. The projects include studying subjects such as teenagers' sexual activity, sex and drug use among truckers and sexually transmitted diseases among Mexican immigrants.

Burklow said the calls were not intended to threaten researchers that they could lose their funding but to inform them that their names were on a list being circulated in Washington.

He said officials also were trying to put the research into the context of the agency's "scientific mission."

The Traditional Values Coalition, in an electronic copy of the list, commented on several studies, including one by a Michigan researcher about teenagers' sexual and mental health. The comments read: "Promotes a 'sex positive' attitude among teens; endorses sexual behavior and condom use among teens."

Andrea Lafferty, the coalition's executive director, called the grants a "total abuse of taxpayer dollars."

"We know for a fact that millions and millions of dollars have been flushed down the toilet over years on this HIV (news - web sites), AIDS scam and sham," Lafferty said. "We know what it takes to prevent getting the disease. It takes not engaging in risky sexual behaviors."

Believe it or not, there's more -- and it just gets worse.

Postscript: In a related development, the Bush administration announced yesterday that it's turning the entire global warming matter over to a new, Pat Robertson-led commission that has vowed to pray at the problem with super-human intensity until it just goes away.