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Conference convenes on sexual health

By JEFF NESMITH
Cox News Service

WASHINGTON -- More than 350 people with widely differing views in the national debate on sex and disease sought "common ground" solutions on Monday -- but ended a fractious, daylong conference agreeing on a few things and disagreeing on many.

High school sex educators, academics, a conservative talk show host, teen sexual abstinence advocates, religious figures, representatives of gay and lesbian groups and others attended the conference.

Satcher said in an opening talk that the "ABC" approach that is believed to have dramatically reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS in Uganda -- abstain, be faithful or use a condom -- might contain the seeds of a solution to sexually spread disease in America, but only if another element, "hope," were added.

"A kid who has no hope for the future is more apt to take risks," he said in an interview. "If you get an environment where young people don't feel like they have a lot of hope for the future, whether its drugs or violence or sex, they look it in a different way. When I decided I wanted to be a doctor, I was willing to sacrifice for that. A child who doesn't feel he or she's going anywhere is not willing to give up even a momentary pleasure."

The theme was to have been "Science and Belief, and seeking Common Ground."

At the end of the day, there was little common ground. Many felt their views were not sufficiently represented. Some felt their groups were not properly recognized.

But former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher of Atlanta, who organized the meeting, said they had come together because of "shared caring about what is happening to our kids."

He said he hoped that common concern would eventually form the basis for solutions to the problems of careless sex and sexually spread disease in America.

"It was probably unrealistic to think that at a first meeting like this, we would be able to find common ground," Satcher, director of the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine, said at the end of the conference.

"But there is a lot of caring in this room," he said. "There is a lot of caring about sex and health. There is a lot of caring about what is happening to our kids."

Satcher said he expected to organize additional conferences and publications and would work to get more sexual health information incorporated into curriculum in medical and nursing schools.

One speaker, Joseph McIlhaney, founder of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin and a member of President Bush's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, said young people are often not sufficiently warned about dangerous sex.

"We don't hesitate to tell children they shouldn't smoke, but we don't talk about sex with them, even though sex can hurt them more than smoking," he said.

McIlhaney, whose group encourages sexual abstinence until a person "is involved in a mutually monogamous relationship," said he was encouraged by the talk of "gay marriage" because it, too, represents monogamy.

"All monogamy reduces disease and a rising tide lifts all boats," he said.

Satcher organized the meeting with Ford Foundation support as a follow-up on a "call to action" on sexual health he issued during his last year as surgeon general.

The report, which Satcher had not been allowed to publish during former President Bill Clinton's administration, was issued in 2001.

In it, he called for a public health approach to promoting sexual health and responsible sexual behavior.

The report noted that an estimated 45 million Americans are infected with genital herpes, that an estimated 5.5 million develop human papillomavirus infections each year and close to one million Americans live with HIV/AIDS.

Jeff Nesmith is a Washington correspondent for Cox Newspapers.