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ATLANTA
(Reuters) - The Bush administration's second-ranking health
official on Wednesday advocated making abstinence a key
pillar of HIV prevention programs for young Americans,
prompting sharp criticism from AIDS activists. "Encouraging
young people and young adults to abstain is the only appropriate
initial strategy," Claude Allen, deputy secretary
of the Department of Health and Human Services, told delegates
at the end of the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference
in Atlanta. "Delaying sexual debut is the first message
they should hear," said Allen, a leading proponent
of abstinence-only sex education and a former aide to
conservative icon and former North Carolina Sen. Jesse
Helms.
While
acknowledging that condoms could sometimes stop the spread
of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and other sexually
transmitted diseases, Allen said their use should not
take priority over messages that stressed abstinence and
monogamy to young people.
Allen's
comments prompted jeers from hundreds of activists at
the conference in Atlanta and came just days after the
federal government reported that the number of AIDS cases
had risen in 2002 for the first time in nearly a decade.
An estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans have the AIDS
virus. AIDS killed 16,371 people across the nation last
year. "Allowing Claude Allen, a man with such hostile
viewpoints on the basic tenets of HIV prevention, to close
the conference speaks volumes about the Bush administration's
true agenda on these issues," said Terje Anderson,
executive director of the National Association of People
with AIDS.
Many
activists have criticized the White House for adopting
a new AIDS prevention strategy in April that they say
is skewed toward programs that focus on testing and counseling
people who already have the disease. Anderson and others
fear that the new approach could cut funding for many
community-based programs that emphasize condom use and
other safe-sex
practices for those not infected with the disease.
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