Elias Zerhauni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said this month
that all the studies funded by the organization have scientific value. Some of
the studies have come under criticism from social conservatives. (Photo by Dennis
Cook/AP)
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JOE CREA
Friday, January 30, 2004
The director of the National Institutes of Health this month defended dozens
of government-supported sex research projects dealing with sexual behavior and
AIDS that came under fire from some conservative lawmakers and leaders in Washington,
D.C.
NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, who took the reins of the agency in May 2002,
told his advisory committee that an internal review of about 190 NIH-funded
grants concluded that all of them were scientifically valid and were of “legitimate
public health value.”
“When we looked at the public-health relevance, there was no question
that these projects should have been funded and should continue to be funded,” Zerhouni
said, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education report.
Last fall, the agency was targeted by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and the Traditional
Values Coalition, a socially conservative group opposed to gay rights, who
questioned why so many of the NIH grants were focusing on sexual behavior.
Rep. Souder’s office did not return Blade calls.
Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who chairs the Energy & Commerce committee,
said he received a “hit list” last fall from the Traditional Values
Coalition. The list detailed many scientific studies that the group deemed “controversial.”
On its Web site, the Traditional Values Coalition criticized the studies that
include “a variety of sex studies of homosexuals, including one that
studied the habits of ‘lot lizards,’ female prostitutes who hang
out at truck stops” and notes that “other studies were on jealousy
among homosexuals, and spirit mediums.”
In a statement, Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty
said that her group is not opposed to research but noted that “research
dollars are scarce” and “choices have to be made.”
“Are we going to research finding a cure for juvenile diabetes or the
sex lives of Mexican workers before and after they come over the border,” she
asked.
According to Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s ‘D-CA’ office, 35 scientific
organizations have issued statements in defense of peer-reviewed research funded
by NIH — on HIV/AIDS, human sexuality, and risk-taking behavior.
Karen L. Lightfoot, communications director and senior policy adviser for the
Committee on Government Reform, of which Waxman is the ranking minority member,
said that the congressman feels the research was being challenged “on
ideological grounds.”
Kenneth Mayer, professor of medicine and community health at Brown University
in Providence, R.I., agreed and expressed concern about the criticism.
“These people have concerns about any grant that is going to increase
any awareness of homosexuality and other ‘unacceptable behaviors,’” Mayer
said. “The points of the studies are not to promote a point of view but
to promote the health of the American public. The way these grants get funded
is not some capricious process. They are very difficult to get funded.”
Dr. Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
said that people must look at science as a combination of projects, rather
than “projects by projects.”
“The theologists are at it again,” Leshner said. “You can
take almost any individual grant and question its merit on physics. These diseases
are here and they are public health problems of world proportions. As the richest
nation in the world, we have an obligation to use our scientific resources
to alleviate that suffering, period. So imposing moralizing on things of this
level of national and international import is unacceptable.”
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