Coburn wants warning labels — on condoms

June 30, 2005

Listening to most of the political rhetoric in the Senate, you’d think Dems are solely responsible for blocking qualified Bush nominees for a variety of posts. This conveniently overlooks the fact that Sens. Richard C. Shelby and Jeff Sessions, both Republicans from Alabama, blocked confirmation of a top Army official; Trent Lott blocked a Senate vote on Bush’s nominee to head a base closing commission; and Sam Brownback is blocking a Bush nominee for a diplomatic post in Europe.

But for the really entertaining Republican obstructionism, look no further than Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, who’s put a hold on Bush’s choice to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. You’ll never guess why.

Coburn spokesman John Hart said the senator’s June 15 hold on Lester Crawford’s nomination as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration is an attempt to encourage Mr. Crawford obey a 2000 law Mr. Coburn sponsored when he was a congressman. It requires the FDA to change condom labels to give more information on their “effectiveness or lack of the effectiveness in preventing STDs.”

Mr. Hart said FDA officials recently have said they will have a draft of the language soon. FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza said she could not discuss policy issues.

Currently the FDA requires condom packages to state: “If used properly, latex condoms will help to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV infection (AIDS) and many other sexually transmitted diseases.” Many brands state condoms are highly effective in preventing pregnancy.

This message, endorsed by health experts as sound advice, is counter to the far-right’s political agenda, so Coburn wants it changed in order to raise doubts with the public about the effectiveness of condoms.

Not surprisingly, the medical and scientific communities are not amused.

“[Condoms] do not provide 100 percent protection, but for people who are sexually active, they are the best and the only method we have for preventing these diseases,” said Heather Boonstra, a public-policy official with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group affiliated with Planned Parenthood that researches reproductive health issues.

Miss Boonstra said that Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, who is a doctor, and the abstinence-promoting Medical Institute for Sexual Health are “manipulating [NIH] data to drive home their own anti-condom, anti-contraceptive message.”

Boonstra was referring to a 2001 NIH expert panel, convened at Coburn’s request, which reviewed published studies on contraception. The panel found that condoms cut transmission of AIDS and gonorrhea significantly, in some cases up to 100%, but also found contradictory studies on effectiveness on preventing other sexually-transmitted diseases. Coburn, in turn, is using the NIH report to argue that consumers should be warned about condoms’ alleged shortcomings.

Amazingly, some suspect Coburn of being overly influenced by a rigid conservative ideology.

James Trussell, who serves on the board of the Guttmacher Institute and is director of Princeton University’s Office of Population Research, said there is “absolutely incontrovertible evidence” that condoms reduce transmission of the most serious sexually transmitted disease, AIDS.

“To my mind, everything else is gravy,” Mr. Trussell said. “All of this is ideologically motivated. What they’re really concerned about is people who are not married having sex.”

You think?

Republican Rules For “Ruling” Over the Sheeple:

1. Government and business can screw the Sheeple all they want, and in every way that they want, without government interference or protection for the Sheeple.

2. If the Sheeple want to actually “screw” in the Biblican sense, however, then the full power and weight of the government must be brought to bear to “protect” the Sheeple from all the “nasty” consequences that can result when two people “bump their uglies.”

3. When in doubt of whether you are a screwer or a screwee (i.e., a member of the Sheeple), call Ken Mehlman!

  • What is it with these so-called doctors among the Rethugs? First Frist and now Coburn. The AMA should at least have the courage to denounce, if not defrock, them.

  • Ed, you hit the nail on the head. Mayhaps MoveOn or somebody like that (Center for Science in the Public Interest maybe?) could start a campaign to flood the AMA with demands that they take a position on pronouncements by Congressional doctors, who clearly use their mantle to pander to ideologues at the expense of scientific rationalism and medical evidence.

    Okay, I guess it’s put up or shut up time. If you’d like to start the ball rolling, Carpetbaggers, you can send an email to the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Here’s the one I just sent. Let’s raise a little hell, shall we? Spread the word.
    *****************************
    Dear AMA,

    The respect which the vast majority of the American public holds for their doctors, and the medical profession in general, is hopefully seen as a sacred trust by the medical establishment. Therefore it is with no small amount of alarm that I see that trust being exploited and grossly misused by certain doctors who apparently believe it is their prerogative to manipulate the public using the authority of their medical profession.

    I speak particularly of Senators Frist and Coburn. I’m sure you’ve seen Senator Frist pandering to his ideological base, pretending that his medical expertise qualifies him to make pronouncements on matters which he has neither the information nor, in some cases, the training to comment on. In the Shiavo affair, most recently, he went so far as to deny what he had clearly said previously when giving his medical opinion on the case, even though it directly contradicted his videotaped statements. And his refusal to deny that AIDS can be contracted through tears or sweat (in a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos) was an outrageously misleading case of Dr. Frist being more concerned with his political base’s ignorance and bias than with medical science.

    Now Senator/Dr. Coburn is demanding that condom packages carry warnings about the risks of condom use which are clearly contradictory to the best scientific evidence. There can be no doubt that Coburn’s rigid ideology is responsible for this position, yet he is using his mantle of respectability as a physician to further his clearly anti-science agenda.

    I would like to suggest that the AMA consider a policy of issuing public comments stating the position of the AMA on issues where Congressional doctors see fit to issue their opinions on matters of public interest, especially where those doctors are attempting to sway the public on the formulation of policy. The anti-science machinations of the Bush administration are legion, and in many cases the public has virtually no recourse to correct the damage. But the AMA has, I would think, a responsibility of physician oversight which arguably includes abuse of authority by its members. I would urge the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs to consider this situation and discuss what can be done to discourage this egregious misuse of the public’s trust.

  • Thanks for that link, President Lindsay. I just sent this brief one:

    Please exercise your historic role by censuring or even defrocking government officials who abuse their M.D. degrees by making idiotic snake-oil medical pronouncements.

    I’m thinking of Frist’s idiocy about AIDs transmission and the Schiavo diagnosis and, now, Coburn’s idiocy about the ineffectivenss of condoms.

    If there was ever a case which met the original criterion for establishing the AMA, this kind of abuse of privilege and position to promote medical fraud would seem to be it.

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