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Sunday, May 11, 2003Most AIDS scientists are terrified these days. They describe witch hunts by neo-Puritans in and out of the Bush administration, and many are so nervous that in e-mail and research abstracts they avoid using words like "gays," "homosexuals," "anal sex" or "sex workers." So scientists at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere are devising their own secret code. I won't give it away, but one term stands for "gay" or "homosexual," another for "anal sex" and so on. Bloggers Charles Murtaugh (here, too.) and Yuri Guri have covered this before. (Unforunately, Yuri’s permalinks aren’t working. Scroll down to May 1. It’s the very last post on his page, or at least it was as of today at 10:30 EST) It seems that there’s a congressional staffer whose making this his own personal campaign. But, surely, it’s the scientists who are guilty of hysteria: "I would recommend avoiding all electronic communication to any N.I.H. office," one scientist warned in one of many e-mail notes buzzing among AIDS researchers. "Phone communication does not appear tapped at this time. Even so, I am advising staff to speak `in code' unless an N.I.H. staff member indicates you can speak freely. In short, assume you are living in Stalinist Russia when communicating with the United States government." Those are words written in anger, not ones that have been given any sort of rational thought. They’re the sort of words you see on doctor email lists when physicians are venting about the new patient privacy laws, or malpractice reform, or Medicare reimbursement. They certainly aren’t the kind of words that should be given to the New York Times and distributed to the entire nation. They make the scientists look, well, like whiney teenagers. But even Kristof understands what's really going on here: Some of the upheaval in the research community may be a paranoid overreaction among scientists, who tend to be liberal and secular. ....One reason for the new strategy is that conservatives have had fits about past community outreach efforts. A recent letter from a Congressional subcommittee thundered about the use of federal money to finance "great sex workshops, pointers on where to have anonymous sex in public places, masturbation instructions, `fisting' forums and tips of how to negotiate sex with prostitutes." Hmm. Defenders say that many at-risk men don't attend meetings on safe sex, so the only way to save their lives is to lure them to picnics or, yes, sex workshops. Still, the efficacy is unclear, and most Americans are unlikely to regard tax dollars as well spent when used to finance gay sex workshops. So, what kind of "science" is being targeted by conservatives, or at least one zealous Congressional staffer? Not, apparently, the sort of science that involves searching for better HIV drugs or a vaccine, but the softer science that look at things like community workshops and other social interventions. That is, "social science," which many would say isn't a science at all. posted by Sydney on 5/11/2003 10:39:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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