Administration Targets AIDS Prevention

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has pulled information about the effectiveness of condoms from a government Web site and is engaged in a "witch hunt" against those who promote condoms in the fight against AIDS, several groups charged Monday. Health specialists charge the administration's domestic AIDS policy has been hijacked by far right conservatives who are putting ideology before young lives. Programs that are not geared exclusively toward an "abstinence-only" policy are facing deep funding cuts.

"It's a campaign to censor science and research, and it's a campaign to use government auditors to intimidate opponents of the administration on key policy issues," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use.

The advocacy groups said they are particularly concerned about federal agency audits of AIDS groups now under way, examining their finances and programming.

The administration defends its auditing review, saying it is simply making sure that tax dollars are properly spent. "We're looking at ourselves to see what we need to do to be efficient and effective," said Claude Allen, deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, who denied the "witch hunt" charges.

AIDS professionals say, however, the evidence of bias against the Bush administration is overwhelming. Information explaining the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission has been pulled from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. Also gone: a section called "programs that work,"which focused on HIV and highlighted several condom-use programs.

In August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched a broad "management review" of its AIDS spending, after HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson was booed and American policies criticized at an international AIDS conference in Barcelona.

Department officials later said they were "genuinely angry" about their treatment and what they saw as "disrespectful behavior"on the part of AIDS prevention groups in the U.S.

The audits follow the July ouster of Scott Evertz as head of the Office of National AIDS Policy. Most AIDS professionals in Washington openly acknowledge Evertz was fired to placate conservatives angered by his advocacy of condom use.

The HHS inspector general is investigating at least eight AIDS programs to see if their content is too sexually explicit or "promotes" sexual activity. Stop AIDS in San Francisco has been criticized for using prevention funding to run programs such as its "Great Sex Workshop," which promotes the practice of sex described as "safe, erotic, fun and satisfying." HHS officials say the program distributes material that many would consider "obscene."

Martin Algaze of the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York said he expected far worse was to come. "We think this is just the beginning," he said.