AIDS Research Under Scrutiny (California Libs Demand Respect -- AIDS sacred cow threatened.)

AIDS research under scrutiny Traditional Values Coalition spurs review By Rebecca Vesely STAFF WRITER

Saturday, November 01, 2003 - Local HIV and AIDS researchers are aghast that their names are on a list being circulated in Congress and reviewed by the National Institutes of Health as part of a wider inquiry into the federal health grant-making process.

"This creates a possible precedent in the arena of science that is very disturbing," said Cynthia Gomez, co-director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UC San Francisco.

The list of 180 researchers nationwide was compiled by the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group that is lobbying members of Congress to stop federal funding of health research on gays and lesbians, prostitutes, teen sexual habits and other topics.

The group sent the list to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which in early October forwarded it to the NIH for review after a committee hearing in which the legitimacy of 10 NIH grants was discussed.

Ken Johnson, spokesman for the committee, said sending the list was an "innocent mistake."

"A health policy staffer forwarded it to the NIH," he said. "It was something that should not have been done without vetting it through the proper channels."

NIH officials, unaware the list was compiled by the Traditional Values Coalition, began contacting the more than 150 NIH grant recipients on the list -- 23 of whom are at UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and other Bay Area research institutions. The NIH staffers asked the researchers to summarize their studies.

NIH halted calls to researchers after the list became public this week. It will send a written report on the grants next week to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"We're pulling together information to explain fully the public health research and why we fund this," said NIH spokesman John Burklow. "We're responding to a request from Congress. The NIH is not questioning the validity of the research."

"It's astonishing there are groups of people that are doing this," said Karen Trocki, an alcohol studies researcher at the Public Health Institute in Berkeley.

Trocki received a nearly $600,000 10-year grant from the NIH's Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 1995. Her research is described on the Traditional Values Coalition list as "Epidemiology of alcohol problems -- risk of AIDS."

"My research is looking at the relationship between social personality factors and substance abuse," she said.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., began an overall investigation into NIH grant-making in March. The focus is to determine whether any fraud, waste or abuse is connected to the program, and will be completed next spring, Johnson said. NIH grants are chosen through a peer-reviewed process by leading scientists.

The Traditional Values Coalition, representing 43,000 member churches, has also requested an investigation by the Justice Department.

Gregory Herek, a psychology professor at UC Davis and respected researcher on hate crimes against gays and lesbians, said he would have been disappointed if his name were not on the list because it would imply he's "not making an impact."

Herek first learned about the list through an e-mail from an NIH staffer who mentioned the institute had to "explain the importance of a large number of projects."

He received a $100,000 five-year grant from the NIH's Institute of Mental Health in 1997, partly to conduct telephone surveys on stigma against people living with HIV or AIDS.

"To me, there's no problem saying monitoring stigma is an important health issue," he said. "It's completely appropriate for the NIH to be funding this research."

The implication that university researchers must defend their work to a religious group is troubling to some members of Congress.

"I am disturbed that this list would be used to bring pressure against respected researchers working to improve and protect health care," wrote Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, in a letter sent Thursday to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who oversees the NIH. "The days of blind judgmentalism in connection with HIV/AIDS should be long gone."

The executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, Andrea Lafferty, said she believes NIH grantees are being funded to "examine bizarre sexual practices with little or no bearing on public health."

"Our review of many of these grants suggests that the NIH has become nothing more than another federal ATM for grant traffickers -- a National Endowment of the Arts with a chemistry set," Lafferty wrote in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, who first complained about the list and called it "scientific McCarthyism."

Not all the researchers on the list are federal grant recipients. Some 23 are listed with only the words "nothing found on HHS search" next to their names. Several of them, such as Evelyn Hooker of UC Davis, are deceased.

What they have in common is that they are all pioneers in understanding homosexuality. Hooker, for instance, was the first psychologist to publish empirical evidence challenging the long-held assumption that homosexuality was a mental illness.

"What it said to me is that people are on the list because of being associated with a funded project, but also because of their work studying gays and lesbians," Herek said.

But Johnson of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said the committee is not targeting or singling out anyone.

"Hooker, for instance, was the first psychologist to publish empirical evidence challenging the long-held assumption that homosexuality was a mental illness."

Interesting article I read this week below on the subject.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200310\CUL20031029a.html

Group Prepares Legal Challenge to 'Born Gay' Theory
By Lawrence Morahan
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 29, 2003

(CNSNews.com) - A coalition representing former homosexuals is developing a legal strategy to litigate on behalf of people who challenge the proposition that individuals are "born gay."

The group also is seeking to promote the idea, particularly among schoolchildren, that people can overcome unwanted homosexual attractions.

Arthur Goldberg, president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality and co-director of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, said the coalition intends to stress the concept of diversity, a concept he said homosexual advocacy groups have misrepresented to promote the concept that people can't change.

"We want to make sure that people understand the diversity, that this is an open forum. We want toleration of those who have been able to successfully change and get their rights recognized as real rights," Goldberg said

Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College, Pa., and a supporter of the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, said the coalition aims to correctly portray the current state of research concerning sexual orientation.

"There are two broad views about the origins of homosexuality - one being related to environmental factors and one being primarily related to genetic factors," said Throckmorton. "The truth is, the science on the subject is so unclear that we can't really say with certainty that we know what the role of any of those factors are."

Since homosexuality cannot be identified by immutable genetic traits, such as skin or hair color, spokesmen for the coalition said policymakers should be allowed to hear that thousands of people who used to consider themselves homosexuals now are living as heterosexuals.

Coalition members also want to see an end to what they consider reverse discrimination by institutions. Since homosexuality is no longer considered a disorder, neither should recovery from homosexuality be considered a disorder, they said.

Goldberg described so-called ex-gays, who he said are fighting a two-front war, as "the most repressed minority in the world."

"They're fighting an internal battle with their own unfilled emotional needs on the one side, and on the other, they're fighting society, which is telling them to accept it," Goldberg said.

Indeed, institutions that suppress the message could put themselves in legal jeopardy. According to Goldberg, schools and universities that tell questioning individuals homosexuality is genetic may be liable in lawsuits if clients endanger themselves or others by engaging in sex acts on the advice of school counselors or psychologists.

Data show that an individual's environment clearly plays a role in forming sexual attitudes, Throckmorton said. Also, there may be some factors that would be loosely called genetic that influence sexual choice in some way.

"But to say that we have any kind of clarity about the way that would occur is just wrong," Throckmorton said.

The message that homosexuality is determined genetically could give homosexual advocacy organizations more ammunition in calls for special legislation and enactment of hate crimes laws.

Conservative groups said they would use same-sex marriage as an issue to rally voters in the 2004 presidential election.

Mark Mead, a spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual advocacy group within the GOP, discounted the message that homosexuals can change and claimed telling people they can is not likely to be helpful.

"Most of the people I know who claim to have changed usually end up getting caught in gay bars or in gay relationships. I think that message has been dismissed by most folks with common sense," Mead said.

But Throckmorton said the coalition's primary objective was to reach policymakers, particularly in the field of education, "because so much of what the schools are teaching concerning sexual orientation is really suspicious from a scientific point of view."

Many school authorities have adopted the "born gay - gay gene theory" as fact, ignoring a considerable scientific controversy over that theory, Throckmorton said.

"Not just among evangelicals and secularists, but within the scientific community, there are many people who simply don't accept that the data support that theory," Throckmorton said.

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