Of all the hair-brained policies we’ve had to endure as a nation over the past eight years, abstinence-only sex education has to be right near the top of the list. The idea that explaining the complexities of sexual reproduction and disease prevention will prove a greater aphrodisiac than exploding teenage hormones is logic at its most crocked. As a federally mandated ideological agenda item it’s shortsighted and asinine, and, as more than a few folks prognosticated, potentially harmful.
But really, how harmful did even the most cynical of us think it could be? Worst case is some kid misses the memo on condoms, goes happily philandering about, ends up like poor Telly from Kids and spends the rest of his life pissed at the world because no one bothered to give him a heads up. Don’t get me wrong, that’s bad, awful, tragic, but it betrays little more than a natural adolescent naivete about acts belonging to the province of adulthood. The real folly is that the no-sex-till-wedding-night set assumes that students somehow will glean the basics of the aforementioned complexities without the benefit of formal education.
Continue reading 'This just in: cure for AIDS found in Florida' >
Last time I checked, vaccines are supposed to prevent you from contracting the illness they're supposed to protect against — that's why I dutifully got my cootie shots every day at recess (never caught it either, depite the best efforts of icky girls). But Merck recently saw their HIV vaccine trials backfire in perhaps the worst way: Not only did they not work, they might make recipients more likely to contract HIV. Hoo boy...that had to be a rough briefing.
