Panic in the sheets

Abstinence crusaders are exploiting fears of a mysterious virus to scare teens away from having sex.

By Damien Cave

Oct 8, 2002 | Dr. Patricia Sulak, wearing a wireless microphone and a plain dark suit, strides across an auditorium stage in Copperas Cove, Texas, and describes in graphic detail the contagious, oozing and occasionally deadly viruses that are the consequences of adolescent sex. The hourlong lecture -- given that day to a rapt audience of 800 local school district employees -- covers everything from pregnancy to AIDS, but one topic in particular seems to grab the doctor's attention: human papillomavirus, or HPV.

In the first 10 minutes of her lecture, she mentions the sexually transmitted disease three times, and HIV only once. She shows graphic pictures of people with HPV infections but no photographs of anyone with AIDS. And when she speaks at length about HPV, in a slight Ross Perot drawl that cements the impression that she's a straight shooter, Sulak seems to revel in the virus' frequency and effects.

"How many people know that human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted disease and that it causes cervical cancer?" she asks. Then she offers a handful of factoids: "Fifty percent of sexually active women have been infected ... In one study, 90 percent of sexually active adolescents were infected with HPV ... Even if a small percentage develops problems, so many people are infected that we have a huge health problem in this country."

Even more frightening, Sulak says, is the fact that HPV can't be prevented through safe sex. Because it thrives on the skin in the genital area, HPV can be passed on even if condoms are worn. The only way to keep the public safe from this dangerous virus, Sulak argues, is through long-term monogamy.

And there, in the name of public safety, is Sulak's agenda. Along with being a doctor and a professor of medicine at Texas A&M University, Sulak is also the founder of Worth the Wait, a popular abstinence-education program that seeks "to educate adolescents and adults on the consequences of teen sexual activity."

Thus, for Sulak, HPV is worth emphasizing not just because it's dangerous but also because it seems to puncture the myth that condoms can keep you safe. That is the key idea that Sulak hammers home, and the one that hundreds of abstinence-education programs now preach with zeal. Indeed, while HPV was largely unheard of only a decade ago, it's now the social conservatives' STD du jour, a part of nearly every abstinence curriculum, lecture and Web site -- "the No. 1 weapon we have," says Leslee Unruh, founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a network of abstinence educators.

In fact, the jury's still out on the actual health threat posed by HPV and the efficacy of condoms to prevent it. Medical research is inconclusive. But in the absolute-minded, black-and-white world of the sex-fearing conservative right, uncertainties are an easily avoided hurdle. Abstinence-only advocates are using nothing less than the threat of death to prevent young people from engaging in sex, with or without a condom. For people like Unruh, who calls HPV "the silent killer," and President Bush -- who plans to increase abstinence-only education funding by $50 million -- agenda trumps scientific complexity. The scare tactic -- with its potential for reducing condom use and a concomitant increased risk of HIV and unwanted pregnancies -- is their chosen strategy, regardless of public-health implications.

Sulak, who insists that she has only a medical, apolitical agenda, is actually one of the abstinence movement's more moderate activists. Other anti-sex programs employ far more frightening scare tactics to make HPV seem as horrific as AIDS. Some falsely claim that HPV is also known as genital warts, ignoring the fact that most HPV cases never lead to warts. Other groups, like the Heritage Foundation, simply call the virus nothing less than "the deadly HPV" -- even though more than 99 percent of the people who contract HPV never die from it. Some legislators, including Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., have even begun questioning whether condom packages ought to carry a warning label saying that they don't prevent HPV, "the cause of nearly all cervical cancers."

Next Page: I immediately panicked. HPV -- What the hell is that?

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