Harvard and the Aids Prevention Research Project
The Adminstrative Director at Harvard University's AIDS Prevention Research Project, has written in response to our interview with Dr Edward Green, with more details about the circumstances in which Harvard University has ended its funding for the project headed by Dr Green. She writes:
"The research grant that Dr. Green runs through Harvard University had a 3 year term which would have ended on February 28, 2009. Harvard Unviersity and the funder agreed to an extension for an additional year. In fact the headline would be much more accurate in stating that "Harvard extended the research by an additional year." This sort of extention is typical in a university when a grant has not been fully spent by it's scheduled end date. So I can verify that in no way has Harvard University ended the project . . . While Dr. Green may have suggested a correlation between his comments and the project's end, that is not in fact an accurate representation of the situation. Dr. Green may be under public scrutiny for his response to the Pope's comments, but Harvard University does not change grant terms randomly."
Comment number 1.
At 1st Apr 2009, faxlesspaydayloans wrote:i hope they will find a cure. i am sick of this thing..aids kill so many people per year i dont even want to think about it.
signed:
the girl.
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd Apr 2009, ThomasScarlet wrote:William's interview seemed to be driven by the assumption that because the Pope is wrong to totally condemn contraception (with which I agree) he is wrong also to imply that proliferation of contraceptives in Africa could make HIV worse.
Conundrum: Who said, "Using regional data from England between 1998 and 2001, I find that increases in availability of youth family planning clinics are associated with increases in teenage STI rates"?
Clue: Neither the Pope nor Dr Green, but it vindicates what both have said. I'll hope to give the answer tomorrow.
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Comment number 3.
At 3rd Apr 2009, ThomasScarlet wrote:Answer: Prof David Paton of the Nottingham University Business School. At the 2004 Royal Economic Society annual conference he also said, 鈥淧roviding family planning services for young people has little impact on pregnancy rates and may have contributed to the dramatic increase in rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people."
On 11 April 2004 the (Scottish) Sunday Times said, 鈥淭eenage pregnancies have soared above the national average under a government-backed project giving schoolchildren easier access to contraception.鈥 Now if pregnancies soared, who would argue that STI鈥檚 didn鈥檛 soar also?
In both cases the rise in STIs came after the government initiative, not before. Yet William treated Dr Green in the way that he (rightly) treated David Irving, who is in denial about the holocaust.
The Pope, of course, is in dogmatic denial about all use of condoms. But William's denial about the effect of condom proliferation seems dogmatic too.
I am sad about the injustice done to Dr Green; I hope he will get the retrospective recognition he deserves. I am sadder about the people in Africa who will suffer if the condom culture takes hold; it would be unscientific to imagine that policies which drive STI鈥檚 up in England and Scotland would drive them down in Africa.
Not the 大象传媒鈥檚 finest hour, I鈥檓 afraid.
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Comment number 4.
At 4th Apr 2009, U11831742 wrote:ThomasScarlet, your comments are scientifically illiterate and your are in denial about the role played by condoms in Africa and elsewhere in the world. It seems yo may be blinded by religious ideological commitments, which prevent you seeing that condoms, allied with other approaches such as partner-reduction, is the way forward. What are you suggesting they do in Africa?
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Comment number 5.
At 5th Apr 2009, ThomasScarlet wrote:It's hard to answer the charges of scientific illiteracy/ religious ideology when you haven't offered any evidence.
I think it's important not to limit the condom question to physical science - that a condom used properly is effective protection against an STI (but only 9 times out of 10, please note). The question of behavioural science must be brought into focus too - that young people may take more risks if they think they are invulnerable by using a condom. This line of scientific argument was offered by both Dr Green and Prof Paton.
What should be done in Africa? Delay of sexual debut, partner reduction and condoms all have their role.
Dr Green said A and B, with C as a backup. If you said "partner reduction, allied to other approaches such as condoms" (rather than the other way round) you would be close to his position.
The S/Times report said, "The official figures will put Malcolm Chisholm, the health minister, under renewed pressure to ignore the findings of the executive鈥檚 recent sexual health strategy, which called for greater access to contraception for young Scots."
Why would the health minister come under pressure to ignore his own governtment's health strategy? Because "the official figures" showed that (as the Pope might have said) the strategy was making things worse rather than better.
This is not religious ideology or scientific illiteracy, but actual science. Ironically, Augustine, you are casting the Pope in the role of Galileo and yourself on the opposite side.
The Pope also has a dogmatic position against all condom use which neither you, I nor Dr Green shares. But the media have read that into what the Pope actually said, and Dr Green has borne their fury because he supported the limited, and scientifically valid, point that a condom culture is liable to make things worse rather than better.
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