[escepticos] ¿USA reescribe la ciencia al gusto de los conservadores?

[paugq@...>]

Hola!

¿Se han descubierto cosas nuevas, o es lo que parece que es: Bush & Co 
haciendo de las suyas para tener contentos a los trogloditas de su 
partido?

Artículo original:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/politics/27ABOR.html?
pagewanted=print&position=bottom

Discusión en Slashdot.org:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?
sid=02/12/28/2132223&mode=thread&tid=103

The New York Times

December 27, 2002
U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On
By ADAM CLYMER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 ? The National Cancer Institute, which used to say 
on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between 
abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.

A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to 
say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to 
earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement, which contradicts 
the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised 
version of the page.

Critics say those changes, far below the political radar screen, 
illustrate how the Bush administration can satisfy conservative 
constituents with relatively little exposure to the kind of attack that 
a legislative proposal or a White House statement would invite.

Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, 
scoffed at the idea that there was anything political about the 
changes, saying that they reflected only scientific judgments and that 
department headquarters had had nothing to do with them. "We simply 
looked at them, and they put them up," he said of the agencies involved.

The new statements were posted in the last month, after news reports 
that the government had removed their predecessors from the Web. Those 
reports quoted administration officials as saying the earlier material 
had been removed so that it could be rewritten with newer scientific 
information. The latest statements are the revisions.

Those statements have drawn some criticism, as did the removal, though 
like the issue itself it has gone largely unnoticed. Fourteen House 
Democrats, including Henry A. Waxman of California, senior minority 
member of the House Government Reform Committee, have written to Tommy 
G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, charging that the 
new versions "distort and suppress scientific information for 
ideological purposes."

Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of 
America, said the new statement on abortion and breast cancer "simply 
doesn't track the best available science."

"Scientific and medical misinformation jeopardizes peoples' lives," Ms. 
Feldt said, adding that any suggestion of a connection between abortion 
and cancer was "bogus."

The earlier statement, which the National Cancer Institute removed from 
the Web in June after anti-abortion congressmen objected to it, noted 
that many studies had reached varying conclusions about a relation 
between abortion and breast cancer, but said "recent large studies" 
showed no connection. In particular, it approvingly cited a study of 
1.5 million Danish women that was published in The New England Journal 
of Medicine in 1997. That study, the cancer institute said, found 
that "induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast 
cancer."

The Danish research, praised by the American Cancer Society as "the 
largest, and probably the most reliable, study of this topic," is not 
mentioned in the government's recent posting, which says the cancer 
institute will hold a conference next year to plan further research.

Dorie Hightower, a press officer at the cancer institute, attributed 
the revision to the institute's periodic review of fact sheets "for 
accuracy and scientific relevance." Asked whether the institute now 
thought that the Danish study failed on either count, Ms. Hightower 
said no. But she said there was no scientist available to explain the 
change.

As for the disease control centers' fact sheet on condoms, the old 
version focused on the advantages of using them, while the new version 
puts more emphasis on the risk that such use may not prevent sexually 
transmitted diseases, and on the advantages of abstinence.

Posted on Dec. 2, the new version begins, in boldface: "The surest way 
to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain 
from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous 
relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is 
uninfected. For persons whose sexual behaviors place them at risk for 
S.T.D.'s, correct and consistent use of the male latex condom can 
reduce the risk of S.T.D. transmission. However, no protective method 
is 100 percent effective, and condom use cannot guarantee absolute 
protection against any S.T.D."

A different Web page maintained by the centers, referring to studies of 
uninfected people at risk of H.I.V. because of sexual relationships 
with infected people, does say on the other hand, "The studies found 
that even with repeated sexual contact, 98-100 percent of those people 
who used latex condoms correctly and consistently did not become 
infected."

But the recently revised page warns that evidence on condom use and 
other sexually transmitted diseases is inconclusive, though it says the 
uncertainty demonstrates that "more research is needed ? not that latex 
condoms do not work."

The new version also omits a passage on sex education and condom use 
that appeared in the earlier document. "Studies of specific sex 
education programs," the earlier version said, "have shown that H.I.V. 
education and sex education that included condom information either had 
no effect upon the initiation of intercourse or resulted in delayed 
onset of intercourse."

In an interview, Dr. David Fleming, the disease control centers' deputy 
director for science, defended the new version. "We try as hard as 
possible," Dr. Fleming said, "to state objectively what is known about 
condom efficacy without nuancing language beyond what is supported by 
the science."

He said that the document reflected consensus of the centers, the Food 
and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and that 
none of its conclusions had been influenced by those agencies' parent, 
the Department of Health and Human Services.

The letter to Secretary Thompson from House Democrats said that by 
alteration and deletion, the disease control agency "is now censoring 
the scientific information about condoms it makes available to the 
public" in order to suit abstinence-only advocates. And it said the 
breast cancer document amounted to nothing more than "the political 
creation of scientific uncertainty."

"Information that used to be based on science," the lawmakers said, "is 
being systematically removed from the public when it conflicts with the 
administration's political agenda."

--
Pau Garcia i Quiles
Enginyer de Telecomunicacions
Estudiant d'Enginyeria Informàtica
http://www.elpauer.org