Researchers Warned About AIDS Grants

winksmith writes "The NYTimes (free registration, etc.) is reporting that scientists researching STD's (including AIDS) must be careful in the wording of reports and particularly of grant requests. many have been verbally warned that phrases like: "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" and "needle exchange," may cause the government to withhold grant money."

Wrong

[John Meacham]

This is not how science works. scientist A, who spent years working on AIDS, cannot just 'spend some time working on cancer'. heck, scientists working on cancer cannot spend time on it unless they have ideas and theories to test. Scientists ask for funding because they have an idea or theory they want to test which they believe could further understanding, you cannot just throw money/time at a problem and have it be equally spent by arbitrary research groups. perhaps they already gave all the tier 1 (likely to produce results) scientists working on strokes money, should they then grant the requests of those unlikely to produce results in strokes because strokes are a bigger threat than AIDS? no, they should give the money to the GOOD projects working on AIDS (or anything) likely to produce results.

where to spend money does not just depend on the disease they are fighting, but the quality of the proposal, its chances of success, and what it might uncover.

seriouly, there is a lot more money out there than sure-thing proposals. where it is spent requires more thought than just what the scientists are trying to show, and it is a grey area sometimes.

so, yes. it is right to spend $X in AIDS research if the project shows more promise than some other project. It is offensive to think that just dollars spent == scientific advancement. it is just not true.

Re:Why the Government Dislikes Those Phrases

[Anonymous Coward]

Qualification: I'm a teenager infected with HIV.

Your logic is flawed. People don't make these decisions "to put themselves at risk" in a vaccum. As a sophemore in high school my biology teacher (the most respected teacher in the school) took it upon himself to convince us that condoms didn't work and that abstinance was the only choice. He used pseudo-scienctific terms and charts and graphics to convince us that condoms were incappable of blocking the virus. This was only a few years ago.

When I started becoming sexually active (and kids do, there's no denying it), I was completely under the impression that the use of a condom was futile unless attempting to prevent pregnancy.

Social research is imporantant in preventing this sort of FUD from being spread around.

Re:wording

[driptray]

This isn't funny, it's insightful. This administration has a negative view of all those things, and so wants negative sounding words to describe them. These positive (or at least neutral) words don't allow them to vilify and demonise certain groups.

• Sex worker - this dignifies prostitutes and puts them in the same class as all other "workers". It doesn't sound as negative as "prostitute" or "hooker".

• Men who sleep with men - this implies that straight people can have gay sex, and that's a bit unsettling to people who want the comfort of neat little labels like "faggot" or "homosexual". It's so much easier to vilify these straightforward categories.

• Anal sex - This phrase is dangerous because it doesn't explicitly mention homosexuals - it also covers male-female anal sex. If men and women do it together then it's harder to demonise.

• Needle exchange - "Exchange" is a such a nice word, connoting such lovey-dovey concepts as reciprocity and sharing. It's just not consistent with vilifying drug users, or with prosecuting the war against drugs.

Re:Why the Government Dislikes Those Phrases

[peachpuff]

That was totally outrageous.

The reason the government doesn't like phrases like "sex workers", "anal sex" and "men who sleep with men" is because they indicate that AIDS discriminates, which is not what the government would like you to believe.

No, the government thinks those phrases look bad on a list of official government-funded projects. That's the obvious explanation, but I guess it doesn't play into your political view of the issue.

If people stopped doing the things that spread AIDS (it's not exactly airborne), it would eventually go away.

Yes, but what are the things that spread AIDS? Other posters have pointed out that blood transfusions and childbirth spread AIDS. It's also spread by sex. That includes non-anal heterosexual sex with a non-prostitute. If you're married and have 2.5 kids, you've done something that spreads AIDS. There are wives who have gotten AIDS from their husband and children who have gotten it from their mother. I'm sure they'd love to hear a little sermon from you about personal responsibility.

Of course, some activities are riskier than others, but we could never starve the disease of victims without killing off the human race.

Consequently, politicians and activist groups would lose a manipulation tool to siphon tax dollars away from issues that are a lot less preventable and affect more people.

You've just accused a whole lot of people of hiding the facts on a fatal disease in exchange for money. Why don't you type "AIDS" into Google and see what these people are [unaids.org] actually [cdc.gov] saying [aids.org]?

Since you're a fan of common sense, consider this: If the government wanted to hide the fact that certain groups are at higher risk, they would reject requests to study those groups, regardless of the wording.