The Bush administration never seems more out of touch with global reality than when it wades into issues of population control.
Last month, U.S. delegates were soundly rebuffed when they tried to inject the president's anti-abortion stance into the work of a United Nations-sponsored Asian and Pacific Population Conference. The United States proposed to strip any reference to "reproductive health services" and "reproductive rights" from a development plan that was the topic of the conference, arguing that their inclusion was effectively advocating abortion and that efforts to boost condom use would only promote underage sex.
The nations present so resented the U.S. pressure that, although it wasn't necessary, they voted 31-1 and 32-1 to expressly include both points.
Bush made clear his intent to let his anti-abortion stance drive U.S. domestic and foreign policy when, as his first official act, he reinstated a Reagan-era executive order barring any international agency that takes U.S. family planning dollars from using any independent funding to even talk about abortion.
This year he blocked $34 million appropriated by Congress for the UN Population Fund. Then the U.S. delegates sent to the Asia-Pacific conference asserted that "the United States supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death" -- a position Bush would be hard pressed to get past the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Asia-Pacific region is home to about two-thirds of the 1.2 billion people on this planet who survive on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. Those nations see family planning as about much more than abortion. In fact, done well, it averts abortion by giving women and men the information -- and, yes, sometimes the birth control -- they need to limit the size of their families, to make sure they do not have more children than they can feed. It also helps prevent the spread of AIDS, which is about to explode in Asia.
That's why family planning is such an important element of the United Nations' ongoing efforts to halve poverty by 2015. That's why Bush's unswerving attacks on it are so arrogant and shortsighted.
Factors associated with refusal to treat
HIV-infected patients: the results of a national survey of dentists in
School of Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, London. gmccarth@julian.uwo.ca
OBJECTIVES: This study investigated dentists refusal to treat patients who have HIV. METHODS: A survey was mailed to a random sample of all licensed dentists in Canada, with 3 follow-up attempts (n = 6444). Data were weighted to allow for probability of selection and nonresponse and analyzed with Pearson's chi 2 and multiple logistic regression. RESULTS: The response rate was 66%. Of the respondents, 32% had knowingly treated HIV-infected patients in the last year; 16% would refuse to treat HIV-infected patients. Respondents reported willingness to treat HIV-infected patients (81%), injection drug users (86%), hepatitis B virus-infected patients (87%), homosexual and bisexual persons (94%), individuals with sexually transmitted disease(s) (94%), and recipients of blood and blood products (97%). The best predictors of refusal to treat patients with HIV were lack of ethical responsibility (odds ratio = 9.0) and items related to fear of cross-infection or lack of knowledge of HIV. CONCLUSIONS: One in 6 dentists reported refusal to treat HIV-infected patients, which was associated primarily with respondents' lack of belief in an ethical responsibility to treat patients with HIV and fears related to cross-infection. These results have implications for undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing education.
