WPost Fails to Reveal Reporter Met w/Iraq Study Group

[Sent today via email.]


Deborah Howell
Ombudsman
The Washington Post

Dear Ms. Howell:

The front-page of today's Post has an article, written by Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright, on the Iraq Study Group and how it is wrapping up months of interviews and deliberations, as it prepares to deliver recommendations to the President and the American public.

This is what the Post reported on who the panel has spoken with:

"Forty experts from fields such as warfare, the Middle East, reconstruction and Islamic militancy were asked to put together options for the group but did not take part in the policy debates."

If you look at the Iraq Study Group's nine-page paper listing all of the experts they consulted, you will see on page 9 that Ricks was among the chosen few to give advice to the group.

Unfortunately, the fact Ricks consulted with members of the group was not disclosed by the Post today and I believe in the interest of full media transparency, it should have been mentioned.

Do you think the Post had an ethical responsibility to inform readers that one of the writers of today's article has consulted with the group he was writing about?

A prompt reply would be appreciated.

Sincerely yours,
Michael Petrelis


[UPDATE]

On the one hand, I must apologize to Thomas Ricks and the Post for not being aware that the paper had indeed disclosed his appearance before the study group.

But on the other hand, the disclosure ran in the Post on November 12, appended to a piece I had not read.

So maybe the Post owes me an apology for not again disclosing Ricks' talk with the Baker-Hamilton panel?

Actually, what responsibility does the Post owe all readers on this journalistic transparency matter? Is it enough they told readers about Ricks' talk to the panel, in just one of his pieces on the study group, its inner workings and eventual recommendations? Should the Post be required to inform readers of this link Ricks has to the panel, every time he writes about it?

Frankly, I think the paper must disclose the link every time, as suggested by the ombudsman Deborah Howell. The burden to know about Ricks' link should not be on me, as the reader, to somehow know when reading a Nov 30 story that he disclosed the link in a Nov 12 article. The onus should be on the Post.

After all, Ricks himself, in his suggestion to me that I change my headline, that the problem is the Post's failure to repeat the disclosure.

And let's not overlook the other journalists who have spoken with the panel, such as Tom Friedman of the NY Times, George Will of the Post, George Packer of the New Yorker, Mark Danner of the NY Review of Books and William Kristol of the Weakly Standard. (Check out my previous post on them and click here.)

As far as I know, none of them have disclosed how and why they advised the Baker-Hamilton commission. If they have, and I've missed the disclosures they've made, make me aware of where and when the disclosure took place and I'll again update this post.

Finally, even though this episode started with me thinking the Post hadn't disclosed, they actually had, only I didn't know it, and now that I do, I must applaud the Post for setting a fine media example of how to make such a disclosure. May we soon have Friedman, NY Times, et al, doing the same as Ricks and the Post.

Here the reply I received from the paper's ombudsman:

Mr. Petrelis, On Nov. 12, the last time Ricks was involved in a story on
the Iraq Study Group, the paper put this tagline at the end of the story::

"Ricks, the author of "Fiasco," a book on the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, appeared before the study group at its members' request to answer questions about his book."

Perhaps it needs to be done every time.

Deborah Howell
Washington Post Ombudsman

And this came from Thomas Ricks:

Actually, my appearance before the Iraq Study Group was disclosed in the Washington Post in a tagline at the end of a story on Nov. 12:

"Ricks, the author of "Fiasco," a book on the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, appeared before the study group at its members' request to answer questions about his book."

So maybe you could fix your headline to more accurately state that:

WPost Fails to Repeat Its Note That Reporter Met w/Iraq Study Group

Cheers,
Tom

AP: Taxpayers Paying for Cheney's Idaho Visit; Where's the Veep?

The last update on the White House's web page for the Vice President was more than a week ago, November 22,when Dick Cheney's office announced he would visit his pals in Saudi Arabia.

Since then, not a peep out of the Veep, at least in terms of any official statements from him, according to his web page.

So is Cheney still in the Middle East, back in the USA or traveling somewhere else in his official capacity as Veep? If Google and Yahoo news searches are any indication, no one knows where he is these days. Perhaps on another hunting trip?

Even though Cheney's not been in the public eye lately, he still generates news. Have a glance at excerpts from an AP wire story today on yet another broken promise to taxpayers from GOP leaders, related to Cheney and his political travels:

COEUR D'ALENE — Local taxpayers will pay $3,500 for Vice President Dick Cheney's Nov. 2 visit to this northern Idaho city to campaign for Republican candidates, despite GOP promises taxpayers wouldn't get the bill.

Officials with the city, as well as Kootenai County, say they will not ask the Republican Party of Idaho to reimburse them for expenses generated by the event, which was not open to the public. [...]

"Not to simplify it, but we weren't doing it for the Republicans," Watson told The Spokesman-Review. "We were doing it because we were asked by the Secret Service."

State GOP Executive Director Jayson Ronk said the vice president's visit wouldn't cost Idaho taxpayers a penny. Now Ronk is declining to comment and instead referred questions about the costs to the White House. "That's just our policy," he said. [...]

"I would think that the Republican Party can come up with $3,500 dollars to pay for a campaign visit by the vice president," Democratic Party spokesman Chuck Oxley told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "If they don't, it just shows the extent of their arrogance, which we've come to expect." [...]

According to public records obtained by the newspaper, sheriff's department employees worked about 60 hours of overtime for the visit, at a cost of $2,014. That doesn't include the regular pay of 26 employees who spent time at the airport where Cheney spoke.

The Coeur d'Alene Police Department reported it spent $1,506 on the visit and would not seek reimbursement. "For $1,500 to have a vice president in this city, I don't think they would find that a huge expense," police spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Wood said.

SF DPH Releases HIV Serosorting Slides Showing ...

Earlier this month a representative from the SF health department made a presentation on serosorting at a forum hosted by the Stop AIDS Project, in which he basically approved the practice of HIV poz guys having sex only with other poz men, as an effective means of preventing the virus from being spread to an HIV negative man.

The DPH expert used thirteen slides in his presentation, and after I filed a Sunshine Act request for them, the department shared the slides with me. All of them are posted here, in the hope they will add to the community-wide discussion about serosorting. Neither the health department nor the Stop AIDS Project post the slides on their site, and I'm not sure why they think gay and HIV activists shouldn't have easy access to the slides.

For me, the most important slide to consider is number 7, which shows new HIV infections between 1996 and 2003 of people getting tested at clinics, where the bulk of SF's HIV tests are administered, and the peak happened in 1999. The rate since then has pretty much continued on a downward trend and it is very likely due to serosorting.

Slide 7 also shows a red line representing new syphilis infections starting to climb in 1999 and reaching skyward. What's not footnoted by DPH is the fact that in 1999 the CDC launched a national syphilis elimination effort, one that significantly drove up the number of syphilis tests performed and also enhanced surveillance.

I must further note that even though SF health officials and AIDS groups were citing the surging syphilis rate and equating it with a supposed jump in HIV infections, that clearly was not the case.

Another fascinating aspect to the data in slide 7 is that the HIV incidence flattening/dropping in recent years occurred even though those same SF HIV experts were sounding alarm after alarm about barebacking, an outbreak of adult male shigellosis, bug chasing, the emergence of Lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), gift giving parties, the spread of a nasty multi-drug resistant staph infection, an explosion of meth use, a rise in male rectal gonorrhea (due to increased testing and surveillance), the climbing syphilis numbers, and a few other scary things I'm forgetting at the moment.

One thing the DPH presenter did not address in his talk is how the heck HIV in SF could stabilize and fall, at a time when the health department saw a new burgeoning gay male sexual health crisis around every corner.

One last point, serosorting, which many HIV control expert agree is curbing new infections, has not been developed, endorsed or actively promoted by HIV prevention groups, the CDC and local health departments. Kind of says something; that if HIV poz gays are left alone to create safer ways of loving, without the interference of the prevention groups and their hostile social marketing campaigns, HIV pozzies do just fine, thank you very much, at reducing HIV rates.

Here are the slides from DPH:

No. 1


No. 2


No. 3


No. 4


No. 5


No. 6


No. 7

(See my comments above on this slide.)

No. 8


No. 9


No. 10


No. 11


No. 12


No. 13

VA Sen.-elect Webb "Tempted to Slug" Bush Over Iraq

Dear Mr. Webb, I'm no psychic, but something tells me you're channeling the wishes and deepest desires of millions of people, not just in the USA, but around the planet.

From the November 29 edition of The Hill, emphasis added:

President Bush has pledged to work with the new Democratic majorities in Congress, but he has already gotten off on the wrong foot with Jim Webb, whose surprise victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) tipped the Senate to the Democrats.

Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon. [...]

Trying to Follow Hillary Clinton's Iowa & NH Money

I'm the kind of activist who thinks there are many batches of political tea leaves to read when looking at the 2008 presidential race, such as FEC filings, funds raised, pundit chatter about setting up exploratory committees, opinion polls, blog accounts of which advisors have signed on with a given candidate and stories in the mainstream press, from the "it's a horse-race" perspective.

One batch of tea leaves not yet thoroughly gone over, at least online, are the Iowa and New Hampshire secretary of state's campaign financial disclosure records for their state's respective political parties, statewide advocacy groups and candidates for state offices.

This is because both of these crucial states on the 2008 primary calendar have lousy web sites, compared to other states' sites with voluminous and easy-to-search data, according to an analysis and rankings by the helpful folks at the Campaign Disclosure Project site.

Check out this incredible portal to follow the political money at the state level, and learn if your state is in modern web age with records online and searchable, or if your state ranks at caveman level. All is clearly explained by the disclosure project leaders.

I wanted to see if Hillary Rodham Clinton or any of her campaign and political associates and close advisors gave money this year to any candidates, or otherwise spread some dough, say, at a county dinner, in Iowa, home of the nation's first presidential caucuses, so I visited the Iowa page on the disclosure project's site as my first step.

Excerpts from their analysis:

Grade: D

Iowa has shown significant improvement this year, raising its overall grade from an F to a D, and its overall rank from 38th to 31st, with most of the gains coming in the Online Contextual and Technical Usability category.

Iowa’s disclosure law can be described as average, and requires candidates to report detailed information about almost all contributions received and expenditures made. [...]

Though the state’s grade and rank for Disclosure Content Accessibility has not changed since 2004, there has been one small measurable improvement in this area, which is that the agency reduced the price of paper copies of campaign finance reports. Otherwise, there have been few changes in data accessibility and the main deficiency is still a lack of any searchable—or even sortable—data, even though approximately one-third of the candidates are filing electronically. [...]

What a disappointment it was to read this, then link over to Iowa's lame campaign disclosure site, with an incredible dearth of public records. Never mind looking for a Hillary donation, or by any other individual for that matter, because no such basic campaign finance transparency is provided by Iowa. To compound the problem of not having easy access to the Hawkeye State's donations records, New Hampshire campaign finance transparency is even worse.

Take a look at the New Hampshire analysis and ranking from the disclosure project:

Grade: F

New Hampshire’s rank in the study dropped for the second year in a row and its disclosure program is still among the bottom ten in the nation, with poor performance in the areas of electronic filing, data accessibility, and web site usability.

New Hampshire performs best in the area of the law, and it received a B- in the Campaign Disclosure Law category. Candidates are required to report details about contributors giving $25 or more, including occupation and employer for those contributing more than $100. [...] The Secretary of State’s office previously stated it offered candidates the option of filing electronically, but clarified in 2005 that what it actually offers is downloadable forms that candidates must print, complete and return via traditional filing methods (i.e. mail or in-person delivery).

Access to campaign filings in New Hampshire is poor, as reflected in the state’s F for Disclosure Content Accessibility. [...]

Speaking of the Granite State, that nickname is totally appropriate and related to my earlier contention that states not making simple campaign finance records available on the net live in a prehistoric stone age time.

Should be a no-brainer, as 2007 approaches, that America can follow the Iowa and New Hampshire political money, and how it influences the 2008 race for the White House, in my opinion. But that just won't happen for this presidential election.

Sydney Herald: Gay HIV Infections = Sub-Saharan Rates

The November 26 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald used this scary headline, HIV infection rate rises to epidemic levels in gay community, for its alarming story on new stats released in anticipation of local AIDS groups marking 25 years of the HIV epidemic. Here's some of what the paper reported:

Last year in NSW, 954 people were diagnosed with HIV and nearly three-quarters of them caught the disease through homosexual contact. [...] "For gay men, HIV is a massive epidemic," Dr Prestage said. "If you are a gay man living in central Sydney, you are living with rates of HIV that are equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa."

In my web searches to verify that 954 HIV figure for New South Wales, I came across and read the Australian Bureau of Statistics' latest annual report, and the section on communicable diseases, provides these figures for recent annual new HIV infections for the entire country:

1996 / 900
1997 / 821
1998 / 753
1999 / 714
2000 / 755
2001 / 765
2002 / 848
2003 / 861
2004 / 886

I don't know how just New South Wales can be reporting 954 new HIV infections when the stats bureau is claiming a far lower number of new infection for all of Australia.

The report also contains important caveats about the HIV stats:

"Not adjusted for multiple reporting [...] The number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses for each year may be revised over time due to late reports, updated information on exposure and testing history for reported cases, and removal of previously unrecognised duplicate diagnoses."

In other words, some of the HIV diagnoses may initially be counted two or more times, but later reduced due to better surveillance by health officials.

Furthermore, the HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis and sexually transmissible infections in Australia Annual Surveillance Report for 2005, makes the following claim, on page 17:

Following a long-term decline, the annual number of new HIV infections in Australia has gradually increased over the past five years, from 656 in 2000 to around 930 in 2005.

Now for the HIV infections for New South Wales, as reported in the 2005 NSW Department of Health's annual report, page 146:

1996 / 447
1997 / 421
1998 / 402
1999 / 373
2000 / 352
2001 / 338
2002 / 389
2003 / 415
2004 / 404

Clearly, HIV is rising slightly in NSW, and across Australia, but I'm not sure the 954 stat for only NSW claimed by the Sydney Morning Herald, is accurate.

As many AIDS activists in San Francisco and across the USA know, we've had our HIV experts in the past make claims of sub-Saharan rates of new HIV infections, only to have the officials backtrack on the claim, not to mention data showing HIV in San Francisco was not surging upward.

This was the original scary allegation, as printed in the June 30, 2000, San Francisco Chronicle:

``We are very concerned, and we are very worried,'' said San Francisco Department of Public Health epidemiologist Dr. Willi McFarland. ``These are sub-Saharan African levels of transmission.''

And this Bay Area Reporter story from July 9, 2000, shows the backtracking:

"The 900 number is not an official DPH number. The comparison to sub-Saharan Africa is unfortunate," Dr. Willi McFarland, an epidemiologist with DPH told the Bay Area Reporter, referring to a quote he gave to the Chronicle: "These are sub-Saharan African levels of transmission."

Six years later, McFarland gave the following quote the science journal Nature, which I blogged about last month:

"Many of us in the field have suspected that the standard methods of estimation have resulted in overestimates," says Willi McFarland, director of HIV/AIDS Statistics and Epidemiology for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Whenever an HIV/AIDS expert invokes sub-Saharan rates of new HIV infections among gay men, deep skepticism, and lots of verifiable HIV stats, are needed as we debate such an alarming claim.

AP: Kolbe's Travel Tab; Barney #2 Traveler in Congress; Tammy Travels w/Spouse

Gay Democratic Representative Barney Frank is the PoliticalMoneyLine's number two in rankings of top Congressional travelers' whose tabs were picked up, in whole or part, by private non-government groups. With 71 trips under his belt, I guess congratulations are due to the gentleman from Newton who's been on the road quite a bit since 2000, according to Barney's travel records, as analyzed and made available by the PoliticalMoneyLine site.

Looking over Barney's itineraries, it's clear when he travels, it's for causes of importance to him. He's spoken to statewide gay groups fighting restrictive ballot initiatives, a Jewish AIDS nonprofit, unions, advocates for immigrants rights, and he attended the late lesbian leader and therapist Betty Berzon's memorial service. Barney's travels primarily are for liberal social issues and on behalf of organizations working for tolerance and social diversity.

How does Barney's traveling stack up against his GOP counterpart, Jim Kolbe? Just between us gay guys, Barney puts Kolbe to shame, by my liberal political standards, in terms of giving back and being there for your community and diverse constituencies, judging by their respective travel files. I can't find anything gay-specific in Kolbe's file, and I'd be hard pressed to say he's spent much time on the road talking to grassroots groups or advocacy organizations working for tolerance.

Okay, it's probably unfair to compare a liberal gay Democrat's travel records with those of a moderate gay Republican, because, after all, one would expect their travels to reflect their political leanings. But it's still interesting to examine such files, if only from a transparency in government perspective, right?.


Falling somewhere between the two gay congressman is Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin, and her travel documents show she's spoken before a few gay groups, like Barney Frank, and attended a forum sponsored by the Aspen Institute, just like Jim Kolbe has. Plus, Baldwin lists her partner, Laura Azar, as her spouse on her disclosure forms.

Kolbe made one trip connected to AIDS when he went to Geneva to interview for a job with the Global Fund for AIDS. Click here for Kolbe's travel info.

And as he ends his congressional tenure, Kolbe faces scrutiny from the mainstream media over his travels. The Associated Press ran this story on the wires Wednesday, when many gays were traveling or shopping. It needs some extra attention:

WASHINGTON -- Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe may be retiring at the end of the year, but that hasn't kept him from racking up free trips abroad.

Kolbe, a Tucson Republican who announced his retirement plans a year ago, reported visiting Turkey, Italy, Poland, England, Canada, Spain and Belgium since June _ all on the dime of private groups including the Aspen Institute and the German Marshall Fund.

Kolbe took more privately paid trips in 2006 than anyone else in Arizona's congressional delegation, according to a list compiled by the independent Web site PoliticalMoneyLine.com, which tracks political spending.

The value of the trips totaled almost $40,000. Most were for three to five days to participate in international summits such as the Bellagio Conference on Migration in Bellagio, Italy, in July.

One, to Geneva, was to a job interview with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. [...]

But Kolbe took the trips after his committee approved the foreign operations bill on May 25, which is one of his key responsibilities. His first privately paid trip of the year was to Istanbul, Turkey, between May 29 and June 4. [...]

Kolbe's travel stands out in a year in which many lawmakers cut back on their privately funded trips in the wake of scandals involving congressional travel. [...]

But Kolbe took far more trips than others in the Arizona delegation. The 22-year veteran of the House ranks 39th in number of trips on PoliticalMoneyLine's list of lawmakers' privately funded travel, which covers 2000 to the present. In another ranking, only two other members of Congress took more government-paid trips between 1994 and 2006, according to the group. [...]

Other than merely getting mentioned in the press as a gay GOP representative, I don't think Kolbe did anything of much substance for us gays while he served in the House. Maybe we should just wish him luck in finding a new cushy position and be glad he's gone from the House. Even though I've certainly had my differences and spats with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I'll take a Barney Frank over a Jim Kolbe any day of the week.


(Kolbe measuring his accomplishments on behalf of gay and lesbian people while in the House?)

Gay Group Inflates SF AIDS Deaths to Raise Cash


Many, if not all, AIDS activists, science reporters and policymakers accept the San Francisco health department's quarterly AIDS surveillance reports and the death stats contained therein as the most accurate numbers of people who have died of AIDS.

Here are a few annual death figures to consider, from the September 30, 2006, AIDS report, page 8, column 4:

2002 / 319
2003 / 298
2004 / 231
2005 / 242
2006 / 138 (Jan - Sept only)

But those DPH death stats, which have thankfully really declined since their height in the early 1990s when the city saw more than 2,000 die annually from AIDS, apparently aren't good enough for the gay men at the community-based Stop AIDS Project organization. Nice to see that at least for the past 2-3 years, deaths have NOT been more than the number claimed by the project.

In an effort to do was is their top priority these days, raise cash, the Stop AIDS Project's web site's opening page features an enormous dark-blue three-hundred figure and this claim:

"More than 300 San Franciscans die of AIDS-related illness every year."

And as the group has so often done in the past when manipulating HIV/AIDS numbers to either sow alarm or raise money, Stop AIDS Project officials offer no source for their 300 deaths allegation. Click on the 300 figure and you'll be whisked away to a page where you can donate money to the project.

If it's not too much trouble, this group should tell the community, and the epi experts at DPH, where they're getting their 300 stat from.

I'm sure there will be some "AIDS alarm queens" who dismiss my objections to this group exploiting, and inflating, the demise of our brothers and sisters because they believe fear and terror are good public health and HIV prevention tools. And you can be sure such alarm queens work in AIDS Inc and they need to justify their careers and salaries, most crucially at this holiday time of the year.

If a homophobic, desperate rightwing group were artificially increasing AIDS deaths in San Francisco, the better to get donations, and in effect killing more people with AIDS than are actually, and sadly, dying these days, there would be an uproar.

But because the Stop AIDS Project is viewed as part of the gay community and based in the Castro neighborhood, it is not held accountable for its shameless exploitation and deception of death figures. The project, which can't be bothered to acknowledge and praise gay men for significantly reducing and controlling new HIV infections in the past decade, in using the bogus 300-deaths stat is showing us their "death wish" for people with AIDS. Leaders of the project likely long for the bad old days when thousands of new infections and deaths were occurring annually, because it would help their fundraising efforts.

Maybe bringing some attention to their holiday "death wish" plea for money will persuade community leaders and the San Francisco media to question the Stop AIDS Project on where they get their unique stats from.

(An un-elected nanny for public health, Jeffrey Klausner, MD)


SF DPH Wrong: NIH Conference and Study Show No HIV, Gays & Viagra Link

Among the more nutty ideas proposed by San Francisco's STD control chief Dr. Jeffrey Klausner was a proposal in 2002 to force the maker of Viagra to add a stronger warning on the drug's warning label about a possible link between HIV and other STDs and use of the erectile dysfunction medication. Citing his own study of people seeking HIV/STD testing at his own city-run STD clinic, Klausner, as is his media-whoring custom, generated lots of news, including a story in the Los Angeles Times, in March 2002:

[Dr. Klausner is] making an unusual appeal to federal regulators to warn consumers that use of the sexual impotence drug Viagra is linked to gonorrhea transmission.
"The data's clear, the evidence is strong," said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of sexually transmitted disease control for the city, who has conducted a study on the issue. "There's really at this point no excuse for inaction by the FDA or the manufacturer."

But Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Laura Bradbard said Thursday that her agency wants to wait for more studies before deciding if changes to Viagra's warning label are necessary. Klausner is not suggesting that Viagra causes gonorrhea. Rather, he contends that Viagra leads to risky sexual behavior, which is associated with higher rates of STD transmission. [...]

He said young gay and bisexual men often use Viagra recreationally, along with ecstasy and other illegal drugs, lessening their resolve to use condoms. In fact, Viagra's manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., has warned doctors about the danger of mixing amyl nitrate (a street drug known as "poppers") with Viagra, which can cause a sharp drop in blood pressure. [...]

[Pfizer spokesman] Cook said the company is satisfied that Viagra's consumer label adequately addresses the issue of STD transmission. It reads: "Viagra does not protect you or your partner from getting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV--the virus that causes AIDS." [...]

Klausner said the label doesn't address his concerns. [...]

A few points need to be made here. First, some Klausner critics scoffed at his study because it only looked at just one population -- clients at his STD clinic. Critics said he designed the study to support his hypothesis of a link between HIV/STD transmission and Viagra, with a population very likely to show at least a casual connection of infections and the ED drug. Kind of like studying people at cocktail bars and finding some of them have liver conditions.

Second, Viagra's warning label, which, like all such labels, is about 24 -28 inches long, double-sided and printed in 8 point type, already included an explicit messages about the drug and HIV.

Third, many men, in the throes of lust and love, do not stop and take an hour or so to read such labels in their entirety.

Why was Klausner going all-out in his crusade? Was it just to cast himself in the media limelight, again, as the lone, brave STD control chief doing everything in his power to prevent new infections? I can't answer those questions, and Klausner never addressed the issue of how many men were likely to all of sudden read a newer warning label, when they didn't previously, and that the warning would aid in halting new STDs.

A few months later, in July 2002, Klausner published his study and results Journal of AIDS. These were some of the highlights:

The potential role of sildenafil (Viagra) in the risk of HIV and sexually transmitted disease (STD) transmission was evaluated among gay or bisexual men seeking public STD services in San Francisco. Viagra users reported greater numbers of recent sex partners, higher levels of unprotected anal sex with an HIV-positive partner, and higher rates of prevalent STD than non-users. [...]

Despite these limitations, our data highlight a significant relationship between Viagra use and sexual risk behaviors, drug use, and new STD among a sample of gay or bisexual men in San Francisco. These findings are consistent with other studies of STD, HIV, and drug-related risk behaviors among gay men using Viagra [2,4], and provide compelling information on the potential role that Viagra may play in the transmission of new HIV infections and STD among gay or bisexual men in San Francisco [5]. [...]

Getting nowhere with his study and alarmist claims, in terms of persuading Pfizer to change its warning label more to his satisfaction, Klausner in July 2004 sent an eleven-page petition to the FDA, asking the federal government to force Pfizer to do what he wanted. He also demanded Viagra be reclassified as a Schedule III controlled substance, and under such a classification, anyone caught with the drug without a prescription, could be charged by prosecutors and be given up to five years in jail and slapped with a fine of $250,000. Click here to read Klausner's lengthy submission.

Then in November 2005, Matthew S. Bajko of the Bay Area Reporter wrote an excellent story about a serious setback in Klausner's campaign:

Fifteen months after requesting federal officials increase the penalties for illegal use of erectile dysfunction drugs, a San Francisco health official is changing course and withdrawing his controversial proposal. But he still is sounding alarms about how the drugs are marketed and labeled because of the role they play in the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. [...]

The move met with fierce opposition from the companies as well as gay health advocates and other medical professionals, who argued changing the classification would make it harder for those who legitimately needed the drugs to obtain them. San Francisco AIDS czar Jeff Sheehy went even further, calling Klausner's petition "AIDSphobic and homophobic," and in August of this year asked the city's Human Rights Commission to investigate the matter.

At a national conference in September to discuss the health concerns surrounding PDE-5 inhibitors, the class of drugs to which erectile dysfunction medications belong, Klausner's proposal once again met with opposition. One cardiologist warned if the FDA placed the drugs under Schedule III it would only increase the black market sale of the medications. Others argued that the move was unneeded because the drugs are already illegal to use without a prescription. [...]

However, Klausner said he has no regrets about filing the petition because data continues to show a connection between new HIV infections and use of Viagra.

And just to show what a "public health nanny" he really is, with national concerns, whether anyone wants him to serves in that role or not, the BAR noted Klausner had other kvetches to make about Viagra:

Klausner also continues to criticize how the makers of the drugs market their products, especially television commercials and the use of professional athletes as spokespeople for the drugs, such as the Viagra-sponsored NASCAR team.

So in November 2005 Nanny Klausner is still claiming data continues to show demonstrated a connected between HIV transmissions and Viagra, and the entire matter fades into the background, seemingly over, right? No, this issue still had another act to play out.

Earlier this week, findings from a National Institutes of Health-sponsored conference, with many analyses, medical journal citations and sexual health surveys and studies, found no link between HIV transmissions and use of Viagra. From the news release put out by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., publisher of the Journal of Sexual Medicine:

A comprehensive, multi-disciplinary conference funded by the National Institutes of Health sought to determine whether the drug class of PDE-5 inhibitors was contributing to an overall increase in HIV infection. The results of this conference appear in the latest issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. [Click here for the full article.]

Convincing evidence was not found to support the conclusion that PDE-5 inhibitor use is a risk factor for HIV infection. For the large majority of men, PDE-5 inhibitor use is conducted in a stable, committed partner relationship. Under such circumstances, the risk of HIV infection is relatively small. Clinicians and educators did emphasize, however, the importance of safe sex practices for those engaging in risky sexual relations. [...]

Irwin Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine , noted that this paper is especially important to the field. "Health care providers should be reminded that individuals infected with HIV frequently have ED from their disease or from pharmacologic agents commonly used in its treatment. Positive clinical benefits have been reported in the HIV population when using PDE-5 inhibitor drugs as indicated."

Well, don't tell Klausner there's a reported positive effect for HIV positive men, if they use ED drugs! It might alter his sex panic ways of thinking. And don't expect him to offer any apology for his years-long crusade, in which he needlessly and shamelessly demonized gay men in general and gay men living with HIV/AIDS. He's an unelected STD nanny who rarely acknowledges a mistake and continues in his busybody role at San Francisco health department.

(Hat tip: Bob R.)

Anti-Pork Group: Pelosi Must Answer $1.5M HIV Earmark Questions

I didn't realize there were time limits on attending the questioning earmarks party, but I am finally there! ;-)

Seriously, I am grateful to Mr. Allison and his Sunlight Foundation web site for adding his voice to the small, but growing, chorus of government transparency and AIDS activists asking for some answers from Madame Speaker-elect Pelosi about a $1.5 million HIV/AIDS earmark for the San Francisco health department.

From the Sunlight Foundation:

Still Exposing Earmarks
Written by Bill Allison on November 21, 2006

Michael Petrelis may be a little late to the exposing earmarks party that we at Sunlight were part of last summer, but he asks exactly the kinds of thoughtful questions that any constituent, as part of his citizen oversight duties, should get answered from a representative in Congress. Petrelis is asking them of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be House Speaker--it will be interesting to see how quickly, and thoroughly, she responds.