Governor promoting abstinence

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, July 19, 2000

ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / July 19, 2000

LAPLACE – Here is a statistic for people to ponder. In St. John the BaptistParish, 24 percent of the population has a sexually transmitted disease.

Here are several other numbers to mull over: In 1998 the population of Louisiana was 4.4 million. Of those, one million people in Louisiana havean incurable STD, and by the end of the year, 300,000 more people in the state will contract an STD.

According to the Governor’s Program on Abstinence, the state and the country is in the middle of a very serious health crisis.

Dan Richey, state coordinator for the Governor’s Program on Abstinence, said, “We have an epidemic out there, and the national media is not talking about it.”To counter that trend and muster up grass roots support for an abstinence program to combat the spread of STD, the Governor’s Program on Abstinence is traveling to 100 cities in Louisiana this summer, trying to spread the word on the growing health menace of STDs and how sexual abstinence can be used to combat the epidemic.

The group stopped in LaPlace Monday.

The abstinence program is one segment of a law passed by Congress in 1996. Called the Personal Responsibility and Work OpportunityReconciliation Act, it calls for an education program on abstinence, (no sex outside of marriage). The purpose is to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births and the rate of STDs.

Congress allocated $50 million for the program, which is to be matched by state funds. In Louisiana, $1.6 million is being spent annually on theabstinence program.

LaPlace was the group’s 35th stop on the tour. Along with Richey waspediatrician Dee Burbank M.D. and Gene Mills, co-director of the LouisianaFamily Forum, a non-profit research and education organization.

“We want to give kids a moral compass for health reasons,” said Richey.

“in one generation, our culture has been turned around, and kids are being taught that having sex has no consequences.”To illustrate his point, Richey said that at the beginning of the 70’s when the “sexual revolution” was in full bloom there were only two known STDs, gonorrhea and syphilis. Thirty years later there are 25 known STDs, mostof them viral and incurable, and some of them, like HIV, deadly.

The most prevalent of these new STDs is HPV, the Human Papilloma Virus.

According to the American Social Health Association, more than 5 million people will contract HPV this year.

The scariest thing about HPV is that it is almost undetectable. Burbanksaid HPV is the most prevalent of the new STDs because it has no real symptoms. Some patients may get genital warts, but that is rare.”Blood tests and pap smears don’t pick it up,” said Burbank. “The only wayto know for sure if a person has HPV is to perform an expensive HPV DNA detection test.”Despite its innocuous effect on men, HPV is very deadly to women.

Research has shown that HPV is the cause of 99.7 percent of the cervicalcancers in the world. In the U.S., 5,000 women a year die of cervicalcancer, more than die of AIDS.

The other horrifying aspect of HPV is that it is spread through skin-to- skin contact. In other words, condoms will not prevent the spread of HPV.Burbank said, “A wet suit may protect you, but a condom is useless against HPV.”Add to that the fact that there are 100 strains of HPV and each of them is highly resistant and able to survive for long periods of time outside the human body, and you have a very scary disease.

Richey said, “With HPV, there is no such thing as ‘safe sex.’ The onlypreventative measure which is 100 percent effective, 100 percent of the time is abstinence, and it is time to restore abstinence to our culture.”That may be a difficult goal to attain.

Even Richey admits sex is “not an easy subject to present to the public.”But he said that if the federal government can spend millions on anti-drug messages it should also be able to spend the same amount on warning kids about STDs and the virtue of abstinence.

“We are dealing with a generation that is not aware of the danger they are in,” said Richey. “Most people have never heard of HPV, yet by the end ofthe year 100,000 people in Louisiana will get HPV.”That is why the Governor’s Program on Abstinence wants to get into all 340 high schools in Louisiana and give the message of abstinence. Burbanksaid the population hardest hit by HPV and other STDs are adolescents.

“Sixty-seven percent of all STD cases in Louisiana occur in people between the ages of 14 and 24,” said Burbank.

The amount of money spent in treatment is also staggering. According toBurbank, $8.4 billion is spent annually treating STDs, $160 million of thatis in Louisiana alone. This cost is just for treatment and does not includeeducation and prevention.

“Billions are spent on HIV research, but none on HPV,” said Burbank. “Rightnow HPV cannot be grown in tissue culture in a lab, so the prospect of a cure is a very long way off.”Gene Mills said educating the public, especially young people about abstinence and STDs, is a real challenge. According to Mills, there areseveral misconceptions and myths among both adults and teen-agers that have to be overcome.

First of all, adults have to discard the notion that sex among young people is inevitable. Secondly, society has to stop giving America’s youth mixedmessages about sex.

“Advertising and the media tend to give a message that says don’t have sex, but if you do, don’t do it too often and be sure and be safe,” said Mills.

“This is a very confusing message.”Mills believes another confusing message is adults giving out contraceptives. For Mills, this is just another way of getting out of theresponsibility of being an adult.

“We offer contraceptives as a white flag of surrender,” said Mills.

Teen-age sex is prevalent for three reasons, according to Mills, peer pressure, curiosity and the idea that “everybody does it.” Mills saideducation and training could overcome all three and show our children the value of abstinence.

“Our society is at a crossroads,” said Mills. “We can either tell our kids acomfortable lie that we can have sex with no consequences, or we can face an uncomfortable truth that maybe abstinence is an option.”Richey and his group are hoping to educate the public with a five-prong attack.

First there is an attempt to raise awareness of STDs and abstinence with community projects.

Secondly, there is a pilot program already in action in Concordia Parish.

This program will be used to test out various strategies in getting the message of abstinence across to citizens. Concordia already has anabstinence program working in its public schools.

Starting this fall, a concerted effort to promote abstinence will begin on 24 campuses of the state’s colleges.

The Louisiana Family Forum has started a website on abstinence where anyone can get information on abstinence and STDs. Richey thinks it is”the best website on abstinence and STDs in the country.” The address is www.abstinenceedu.com. Finally, the program is starting a grass-roots project. The Governor’sProgram on Abstinence has divided the state into 12 districts. A leader ineach district will be responsible for getting a grass-roots effort to educate the public.

In the River Parishes area, Emily Beauchamp of LaPlace is the district director.

Richey hopes that by educating the people, the government can get a handle on the problem.

“If you give people the facts, they will help you try and solve the problem,” said Richey.

Here in the River Parishes, Beauchamp has already hit the ground running.

A certified abstinence educator, Beauchamp has been talking with doctors at the River Parishes Hospital and as a result, doctors have agreed to go into area schools and lecture on the dangers of STDs. Beauchamp is nowtalking with the school boards is her six-parish district about starting abstinence programs.

The biggest thing Beauchamp and the Governor’s Program on Abstinence needs is volunteers. If anybody is interested in helping out from being aspeaker to sponsoring a meeting, call Emily Beauchamp at 504-652-3899 or e-mail her at emilybeau@juno.com.There will be a regional meeting for the Governor’s Program on Abstinence on Oct. 23 in Houma. The public is invited, and the location for the meetingwill be posted on the abstinenceedu.com web site.

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