Going Blindly Into the Dark : Feds kill two much-needed surveys of sexual behavior

The Bush Administration’s willingness to allow some conservatives to exercise a veto power over public health policy puts many Americans at risk. Federal health officials have been pressured into cutting off research grants for two major federally funded surveys on human sexual behavior--even though the data collected could help shield millions of people from sexually related health problems, including AIDS.

Chanting the mantra of abstinence and chastity, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) have savagely attacked the need for this research. The Administration, which had resisted efforts of conservatives to cut off funds to the National Endowment for the Arts, caved in and pressured the National Institutes of Health to indefinitely delay funding a $1-million study on the social patterns that govern choice of sexual partners among 2,500 adults in two cities.

Data collected by such surveys could prove invaluable to physicians, public health officials, social workers and educators--all of whom, by identifying the extent to which public health is threatened, can play important roles in informing Americans about the dangers of certain sexual practices.

Last summer the federal Department of Health and Human Services planned to sponsor a five-year, $18-million research grant to study the sexual behavior of 24,000 teen-agers, who would have needed parental permission to participate in the survey. This survey might have provided data useful in preventing teen-age pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. (This year, an estimated 2.5 million teens will contract sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.)

Before the project won final approval, it underwent close scrutiny by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institutes of Health. And then, in July, despite NIH’s approval of the project on the basis of its scientific merit and design, Health Secretary Louis W. Sullivan killed it, contending the study might undermine warnings about promiscuity.

In a sense Helms and Dannemeyer are right: Abstinence and chastity help contain sexually transmitted diseases. But reality suggests that such self-denial is not now, and never has been, universally observed. And until such time as it is, doctors and other health professionals will need serious surveys of sexual behavior.