In 2008, Family Planning Health Services and the Adams County Health Department presented a combined educational program for medical professionals visiting the US from Uzbekistan.

The group consisted of doctors, nurses and administrators of health programs. They were well educated, caring individuals who wanted to understand how public health departments and non-profit family planning agencies were run in the US. They cared very

much about their citizens and providing quality health care to their people. They expressed that they had lived a long time under Russian rule and they now saw their independence as an opportunity to improve their health care delivery systems.

We read with dismay the recent article in the Canadian Press attached below. It would appear those very motivated health providers are now caught in a government supported program to sterilize poor women…even against their knowledge and will.

Long ago someone asked us if teen girls shouldn’t be forced to have a Norplant Implant contraceptive inserted in their arm at age 13. Norplant provided contraception for 5 years by preventing ovulation. The questioner thought this would be a good way to prevent teen pregnancy…at least until the girl graduated from high school. I was shocked by the question and replied that I don’t believe in involuntary birth control. I believe in voluntary birth control and family planning services. This is a nation founded on freedom of the individual and I could never condone forcing someone to contracept just like I could never see forcing someone to conceive.

Too many of our ancestors fought and died to see that we have freedom in this country. Freedom to make our own choices. Many, many of our ancestors came to the USA seeking just those freedoms for themselves and their children. Forced contraception, whether temporary or permanent, is un-American[1] and should be outlawed anywhere in the world.

________________

1 un-A·mer·i·can

–adjective

not American; not characteristic of or proper to the U.S.; foreign or opposed to the characters, values, standards, goals, etc., of the U.S.

By Mansur Mirovalev (Canadien Press)

GULISTAN, Uzbekistan — Saodat Rakhimbayeva says she wishes she had died with her newborn baby.

The 24-year-old housewife had a cesarean section in March and gave birth to Ibrohim, a premature boy who died three days later.

Then came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile. The doctor told her the hysterectomy was necessary to remove a potentially cancerous cyst, while she believes he sterilized her as part of a state campaign to reduce birthrates.

“He never asked for my approval, never ran any checks, just mutilated me as if I were a mute animal,” the pale and fragile Rakhimbayeva said through tears while sitting at a fly-infested cafe in this central Uzbek city. “I should have just died with Ibrohim.”

According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilized without their knowledge or consent in a program designed to prevent overpopulation from fuelling unrest.

Human rights advocates and doctors say autocratic President Islam Karimov this year ramped up a sterilization campaign he initiated in the late 1990s. In a decree issued in February, the Health Ministry ordered all medical facilities to “strengthen control over the medical examination of women of childbearing age.”

The decree also said that “surgical contraception should be provided free of charge” to women who volunteer for the procedure.

It did not specifically mandate sterilizations, but critics allege that doctors have come under direct pressure from the government to perform them: “The order comes from the very top,” said Khaitboy Yakubov, head of the Najot human rights group in Uzbekistan.

Uzbek authorities ignored numerous requests by The Associated Press to comment on the issue. Most western media organizations have been driven from the country, and government officials face serious reprisals for contacts with foreign journalists. However, the AP was able to interview several doctors, sterilized women and a former health official, some on condition of anonymity.

This Central Asian nation of 27 million is the size of California or Iraq, and population density in areas such as the fertile Ferghana Valley is among the world’s highest.

Rights groups say the government is dealing with poverty, unemployment and severe economic and environmental problems that have triggered an exodus of Uzbek labour migrants to Russia and other countries.

Heightening the government’s fears is the spectre of legions of jobless men in predominantly Muslim Uzbekistan succumbing to the lure of Islamic radical groups with ties to Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida.

Uzbekistan is not alone in coming under allegations of using sterilizations to fight population growth: Authorities in China’s Guangdong Province were accused by Amnesty International in April of carrying out coerced sterilizations to meet family planning goals. But no other country is known to use that method as a government policy.

Uzbekistan once had one of the Soviet Union’s highest birthrates, four to five children per woman, and Communist authorities even handed out medals to “heroine” mothers of six or more. Young army conscripts from Uzbekistan and the four other Central Asian republics made up for a declining ethnic Russian population.

Now, as authorities try to unravel that legacy, the birthrate has dropped to about 2.3 children per woman — still higher than the rate of 2.1 that demographers consider sufficient to replenish a falling population.

The sterilization campaign involves thousands of government-employed medical doctors and nurses who urge women of childbearing age, especially those with two or more children, to have hysterectomies or fallopian tube ligations, said Sukhrobjon Ismoilov of the Expert Working Group, an independent think-tank based in the capital, Tashkent.

The surgeon in Rakhimbayeva’s case, a burly man in his 40s named Kakhramon Fuzailov, refused to comment on her claims and threatened to turn an AP reporter over to the police for “asking inappropriate questions.”

In 2007, the UN Committee Against Torture reported a “large number” of cases of forced sterilization and removal of reproductive organs in Uzbek women, often after cesarean sections. Some women were abandoned by their husbands as a result, it said.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Karimov, a former Communist functionary, remained at the helm and retained many Soviet features, such as strict government control of public health. Government-paid doctors and nurses are assigned to each district or village.

Family planning is far different from western norms.

Instead of focusing on raising awareness of widely available condoms or birth-control pills, the Health Ministry has chosen to promote uteral resections nationwide as the most reliable method of contraception.

Some women do volunteer. Khalida Alimova, 31, a plump, vivacious sales manager from Tashkent, agreed to a resection in March, almost a year after her third child was born.

She said her husband, Alisher Alimov, 32, an occasional cab driver who spends days playing backgammon with his friends, refused to use condoms or allow her to take birth-control pills.

“Now I feel relieved,” Alimova said over a cup of green tea in the kitchen of their shabbily furnished Tashkent apartment. She added, though, that she never told her husband about the operation.

Many other women, especially from poor rural areas, say they face coercion from health workers or even potential employers to agree to sterilization.

A 31-year-old mother of two from the eastern Uzbek city of Ferghana said the director of a kindergarten where she sought a job told her to show a certificate confirming she had been sterilized.

After consulting her disabled husband, who receives a government pension of $40 a month, she said she agreed to the procedure, produced the certificate and got the job.

“We just had no choice,” the woman, who gave only her first name Matluba, said by telephone from the eastern city of Ferghana. She refused to provide her last name or identify the kindergarten for fear of being fired.

Several health workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity also because they feared dismissal or persecution, said the authorities are especially eager to sterilize women with HIV, tuberculosis or a drug addiction. Instruments often are not sterilized properly and can infect other women, they said.

Inexperienced medical workers can also cause serious health complications. “Any negligence can do a lot of damage,” said Shakhlo Tursunova, a gynecologist from Tashkent.

Health workers involved in the campaign are threatened with salary cuts, demotion or dismissal if they do not persuade at least two women a month to be sterilized, a former high-ranking Health Ministry official told the AP on condition of anonymity.

Veronika Tretyakova, a 32-year-old doctor from Tashkent, said she came under pressure from health workers to be sterilized.

“The nurse said, ‘They would hang me if I let you have another child,’” Tretyakova said. “I told her to think about her soul.”

Tradition plays a strong role in this male-dominated society, where a large family is seen as a blessing from God, and women are often blamed for childless marriages.

After checking out of the maternity hospital in Gulistan where she lost her son, Rakhimbayeva said she shared her anguish with her husband, Ulmas, a 29-year-old bus driver who refused to be interviewed for this story. Their marriage was arranged by their parents in 2008.

Instead of consoling her, she said, he told her to move back to her parents’ house and wait for divorce papers as he did not want to live with a barren wife.

“He never even questioned why the doctors maimed me, just blamed everything on me,” Rakhimbayeva said wringing her hands. “Now I have no hope of having children, no job, no future.”

We thought it valuable to post a recent article from the Gloucester County News and NJ.com about the 50^th anniversary of the first “foolproof contraceptive” – the birth control pill.  Margaret Marsh, university professor of history and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers-Camden says, “What the pill did do is make it possible for women to have careers. It really was the first foolproof contraceptive.”  Now, we all know the birth control pill isn’t “foolproof” and women can forget their pills or take them incorrectly…but the birth control pill was better than any reversible method available at the time and worked so well that women were indeed able to control their fertility.

Sue Kettner Public Relations Coordinator

Rutgers–Camden historian puts 50th anniversary of the pill into cultural medicine cabinet

By John Barna

March 20, 2010, 1:36PM
CAMDEN – Americans consume innumerable amounts of medicine, but only one pill is known precisely as “the pill.” This year marks the 50th anniversary of oral contraception, an innovative collaboration between Gregory Pincus and John Rock that some have called the development of the 20th century.

As Rock’s 120th birthday is commemorated on March 24, the only comprehensive biography on Rock has its origins at Rutgers University—Camden.  Margaret Marsh, university professor of history and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers–Camden, with her sister Wanda Ronner, a clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, were the first researchers granted access to John Rock’s personal letters. Together they wrote the book The Fertility Doctor: John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

According to Marsh, Rock did not fully appreciate the far-reaching impact of the pill. In fact, he predicted the pill would find its greatest popularity among married couples.  But when things turned out differently, Rock wasn’t upset.  “When people warned that the pill would allow even more unmarried couples to have sex, he would reply that if these couples are having sex anyway then they might as well be safe from pregnancy,” notes Marsh of Haddonfield.

But the Rutgers–Camden historian adds that no one could have possibly predicted all that transpired at the end of the 60s. “The first decade of the pill witnessed so many changes that sometimes I find it hard to believe that 1960 and 1968 are even in the same century,” says Marsh.

The sexual revolution, she points out, didn’t occur solely because of the pill’s existence. “There were many contributing factors like Baby Boomers coming of age, more people going to college, and the huge anti-war rebellion,” she says.  “What the pill did do is make it possible for women to have careers. It really was the first foolproof contraceptive.”

While there are many more oral contraceptive options available to women today – some 30 variations, in fact – one big difference since the pill was first created are the lower doses of the various drugs in it.

“The creators had no idea how low a dose could be and still prevent conceptions,” notes Marsh.

And unlike the 1950s, the average age of parents today is older.  Couples tend to live together and then get married when they decide to have children. “People can be engaged forever. In the 1950s and early 1960s, people got married and were expected to have children right away. Now we seem to postpone marriage until we’re ready to have children, increasing the age of when we do marry.”

What hasn’t changed since the early days of the pill is its tricky relationship with certain religious groups.  But Rock, an ardent Catholic, nearly convinced the church to reconsider its views on allowing contraception use by its members. According to Marsh, Rock didn’t completely fail in this pursuit.

“While contraceptives are against the laws of the Catholic Church, American Catholics have come to rely on their consciences more than on the pope’s pronouncements regarding birth control,” states Marsh. “The pope has never spoken infallibly on the issue. When he speaks ’ex cathedra,’ he can’t be wrong, because he’s speaking the direct word of God. But the pope has never spoken ‘ex cathedra’ on the issue of contraception.”

In fact, American Catholics are using birth control in the same numbers as the rest of the country. Today about 80% of women who have used any form of contraception have used the pill at one time or another in their lives.
What’s in the future for reproductive medicine? With the introduction of the pill and in vitro fertilization, b y the end of the twentieth century sex and reproduction had become uncoupled.  Now you can guarantee sex without reproduction and can also ensure reproduction without sex.  With even more advances on the horizon, Marsh predicts that our definitions of family will be reevaluated.

“All of these technological advancements enlarge the question of what it means to be a family. I see same-sex marriage as part of a family-building trend, even a conservative one,” posits Marsh. “A hundred years from now, we won’t think it’s a big deal.”

“A defender of the church,” proclaimed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline for an extensive story about the new Archbishop-designate, Jerome Listecki. The subtitle for the article was: “Archbishop designate Listecki vows collaboration, but unafraid of debate.” The subtitle was probably derived from the bishop’s description of how he planned to participate in the political process. He said: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”

The following month, young Catholics for Choice (yCFC – a Washington D.C. based organization) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS – an agency with family planning clinics in eight Wisconsin counties) formed a unique sectarian-secular advertising partnership, produced informational ads for broadcast, and then embarked on a two-day Wisconsin “road-trip” to draw media attention to their campaign and to build public (including the Catholic public) awareness and knowledge about emergency contraception.

The purpose of the joint media campaign was two-fold; 1) to inform the public about how Plan B works so they would have it on hand in advance of need and, 2) to inform Catholic women of reproductive age that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops health care directives permit the use of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies resulting from rape.

In the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, Ron Hamel, Ph.D., makes it very clear that the ethics of access to emergency contraception for Catholics needs to be fully examined and explained. Professor Hamel’s article and the YCFC/FPHS EC campaign are an effort to fulfill that responsibility when there is significant resistance.

The campaign succeeded in getting a response from the Archbishop-designate and thus succeeded in its secondary purpose. The headline on the Christmas Eve edition of the La Crosse Diocesan newspaper is: “Bishop Rejects Young Catholics for Choice Message.” The front page column ran adjacent to the departing bishop’s message. But what he rejected so prominently: “ . . . that Catholics can disregard Church teaching on contraception, abortion, and human sexuality in general and remain Catholics in good standing,” was only weakly connected to the message that yCFC and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) were promoting.

Bishop Listecki, like most of the Catholic protestors in front of the FPHS clinic, will allow “no room for interpretation,” once the bishop’s authority has been invoked. Many within the church see the bishop’s pattern of authoritarian rebukes, condemnations, and admonitions as futile efforts to suppress dissent and they understand they are not the views of other Catholics or even the other American bishops.  Just as importantly, the denials and condemnations are not solely inflicted on the faithful. The prayer vigil protestors’ and Bishop Listecki’s efforts to eliminate access to emergency contraception, if they succeed, would apply to women regardless of their faith.

Erik Cieslewicz and Brooke Sperry have produced a documentary about the joint campaign that will be released February 17^th, 2010.  The web-posting will occur on the same day that another Lenten prayer vigil outside an FPHS clinic (which does not provide abortion services) begins in central Wisconsin. The video shows the challenge as well as the fun of the effort to educate the public in the face of consistent efforts to suppress and to misinform. Earlier, “40 Days for Life” prayer vigils played a large part in motivating FPHS and yCFC to cooperate in the advertising effort to correct misinformation being spread by their opponents.

Enjoy the video!

Rise in teenage pregnancy rate spurs new debate on arresting it
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.
The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 — the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation’s leading reproductive-health think tank.
Teen pregnancy has long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage or focus on birth control.
“The decline in teen pregnancy has stopped — and in fact has turned around,” said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York that conducted the analysis. “These data are certainly cause for concern.”
The abortion rate also inched up for the first time in more than a decade — rising 1 percent — intensifying concern across the ideological spectrum.
“One of the nation’s shining success stories of the past two decades is in danger of unraveling,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Clearly, the nation’s collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today.”
The cause of the increase is the subject of debate. Several experts blamed the increase in teen pregnancies on sex-education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence. Others said the reversal could be due to a variety of factors, including an increase in poverty, an influx of Hispanics and complacency about AIDS, prompting lax use of birth control such as condoms.
“It could be a lot of things coming together,” said Rebecca Maynard, a professor of economics and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It could be we just bottomed out, and whenever you are at the bottom, it tends to wiggle around. This may or may not be a sustained rise.”
The report comes as Congress might consider restoring federal funding to sex-education programs that focus on abstinence. The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in funds for such groups, but the Senate’s health-care reform legislation would reinstate $50 million.
The new findings immediately set off a debate over funding. Critics argued that the disturbing new data were just the latest in a long series of indications that the focus on abstinence programs was a dismal failure.
“Now we know that after 10 years and over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only funding, the U.S. is lurching backwards on teen sexual health,” said James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington advocacy group.
Supporters of abstinence programs, however, said the findings provided powerful evidence of the need to continue to encourage delayed sexual activity, not only to avoid pregnancy but also to reduce the risk for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
“Research unmistakably indicates that delaying sexual initiation rates and reducing the total number of lifetime partners is more valuable in protecting the sexual health of young people than simply passing out condoms,” said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, who blamed the increase on several factors.
“Contributors include an over-sexualized culture, lack of involved and positive role models, and the dominant message that teen sex is expected and without consequences,” Huber said. The Obama administration is launching a $110 million pregnancy prevention initiative focused on programs with proven effectiveness but has left open the possibility of funding some innovative approaches that include encouraging abstinence.
The rate at which U.S. teenagers were having sex rose steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, fueling a sharp rise in teen pregnancies and births. That trend reversed around 1991 because of AIDS, changing social mores about sex and other factors, including greater use of contraceptives, which pushed the U.S. teen pregnancy rate to historic lows.
The U.S. rates still remained higher than those in other industrialized countries.
The decline in teen sexual activity had leveled off starting about nine years ago, and the teen birth rate began to increase in 2005. It wasn’t known before if the increase was due to more pregnancies or fewer abortions and miscarriages. For the first time, the new analysis uses those factors in calculating the teen pregnancy rate.
The analysis examined data on teenage sex and births collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics and data on abortions collected by the CDC and Guttmacher — the two best sources of such data.
The abortion rate among teenagers rose 1 percent in 2006 from the previous year — to 19.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age group, the analysis found. Taking that and miscarriages into account, the analysis showed that the pregnancy rate among U.S. women younger than 20 in 2006 was 71.5 per 1,000 women, a 3 percent increase from the rate of 69.5 in 2005. That translated into 743,000 pregnancies among teenagers, or about 7 percent of women in this age group.
“When birth rates go up and down, it could be the result of kids getting fewer abortions,” said John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University. “This shows that it’s a true rise in pregnancies.”
The rate increase was highest for blacks. Among blacks, the rate increased from 122.7 per 1,000 in 2005 to 126.3. For Hispanics the rate rose from 124.9 per 1,000 women to 126.6. Among whites, the rate increased from 43.3 per 1,000 women to 44.0.

Catholic leaders know they have not persuaded one another, the public, or their own laity, to agree that contraception is evil. So when it comes to public policy, rather than engage in dialogue and debate, they seem to make a statement and end it with a “Dixi” (Latin for “I have spoken”) as though that is all that should be necessary.

For those who accept the authority of the Catholic hierarchy, that is enough.  But in the democratic process of establishing public policies that are respectful of Catholics and non-Catholics, it is unresponsive and insufficient.

Nonetheless, reproductive rights advocates have recently witnessed ultimatum upon ultimatum.

• Contraceptive benefits?                                         This College will close!
• Gay discrimination prohibited?                              No more poverty programs!
• Emergency contraception required?                        Emergency rooms to close!
• Pharmacists required to fill prescriptions?               They’ll be forced to quit!
• Health insurance reform with abortion coverage?     No health care reform!

This kind of tactic is often inaccurately called “blackmail,” but a better description would be “tantrum.” Infants and toddlers who, frustrated in their efforts to control the environment or their parents, sometimes act out emotionally, physically, and inappropriately.  Adults try to ignore this behavior and toddlers outgrow it.  “But,” www.KidsHealth.org advises us; “do not reward your child after a tantrum by giving in. This will only prove to your little one that the tantrum was effective.”

The message that we must persuade our elected officials and policy makers to learn is that good policy-making must be based on evidence, science, justice and reason and that means a civil discussion with an informed and engaged audience is key. We may not always be able to ignore childish political tantrums, but we must never accommodate and encourage them.

For this reason, Young Catholics for Choice (yCFC) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) will collaborate and a launch a Wisconsin-based advertising and media campaign to promote information about emergency contraception (EC). 

In terms of public discussion, misinformation and distortion about emergency contraception has confused the public, policy makers, and especially Catholic parishioners. Most people have an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of EC. Until that changes, for women who need EC, neither the health care principle of ‘informed consent nor the religious principle of ‘informed conscience’ will have real meaning.  The purpose of the campaign is to replace misunderstanding with evidence and knowledge so individuals, including people of every faith, can make decisions about emergency contraception with a more fully informed conscience.

Each of the four cities where the informational ads will run has a distinct example of the need for a more informed public.

· In Eau Claire, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner reported to us that an area Catholic hospital is violating the intent of state law because it refuses to offer EC to rape victims unless the victim submits to time-consuming, expensive, and unnecessary testing. 

· In Milwaukee, the new archbishop has declared his opposition to Wisconsin’s “Compassionate Care for Rape Victims” law based on a medically-unsupported belief that the most common form of EC (Plan B ™) “causes abortions.”

· In Green Bay, two television stations refused to run the ads we produced with Young Catholics for Choice earlier than 9:00 p.m. because they were “too controversial.”

· In Wausau, local priests routinely pray the rosary in front of our family planning clinic (which does not provide abortions or medical referrals for abortion) with signs that say “Stop Chemical Abortion” and “Family Planners Promote Child Promiscuity.”

Our collaborative informational advertising about emergency contraception will begin this week and bring together secular and sectarian voices to inform our citizens. There will be radio and television ads throughout Wisconsin (and on the web) to encourage women of reproductive age to go to www.EZEC.org to learn more about EC and to have Plan B™ on hand before they need it.

Speaking about political engagement and the Catholic Church, the new Archbishop of Milwaukee stated: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”  Our emergency contraception information campaign will meet that responsibility with sectarian and secular voices.

So many young women who have a teen pregnancy find it daunting to think of completing their education. There seem to be many barriers – time, support, money, good child care, etc. But completing their education is the second most important thing they can do for themselves and their children. (The first most important issue is to obtain adequate health and medical care for mom and for baby.)This book supports, encourages and identifies young women who met the challenge and obtained higher education after experiencing a teen pregnancy.  Education breaks the cycle of poverty; it enhances the potential for adequate income, health insurance, job security and a better life for her and for her child.

As Pope Benedict boarded a plane to Yaounde, he said: “”You can’t resolve it (Africa’s HIV/Aids Epidemic) with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Dr. Green’s research and his public presentations, by contrast, state that condoms are seldom used consistently and correctly in general populations and for many reasons, most of which are unknown, condom distribution programs in those areas of Africa have failed to show positive results on a population basis.  He explains that condoms are 80-90% effective at HIV transmission prevention when used consistently and correctly by individuals.

In fact, even in the Washington Post letter that is generating the public attention, Green says: “Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship.”

Although Dr. Green’s research findings overlap with Pope Benedicts moral position that reducing multiple concurrent partners and promotion of fidelity and abstinence have been successful strategies for many people, we cannot ignore the distinction between the proven effectiveness of consistent and correct use of condoms by individuals at risk and our inability to show condom distribution program effectiveness in certain parts of Africa on a population research basis.

Dr. Green supports universal access to condoms and consistent and correct use by individuals at risk of sexually transmitted disease infection.  Pope Benedict XVI does not.

It is pointless to speculate on Dr. Green’s motivations for writing a letter to the Washington Post that minimizes the distinctions between the Vatican’s point-of-view and his own as a Harvard School of Public Health HIV/Aids researcher.  I am no Harvard epidemiologist, but I know that confusion resulting from Dr. Green’s letter will be used to oppose public health policies and programs that Dr. Green supports.  I know that opposition puts the lives and health of millions in Africa and across the world at risk.