It’s refreshing to see President Obama moving forward on his promise to separate science from politics. By freeing scientists to do more research using stem cells, and by commissioning NIH to develop guidelines, the President has put scientific decisions where they belong – with scientists.
Now maybe he’ll do the same with abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which have been condemned as inaccurate and ineffective by educators and researchers. It should be an easy deficit-reducing step to stop funding programs that withhold and distort health information. Besides, it would get Congress out of the business of deciding what to teach teenagers about sex. Considering all the members of Congress who appear to lack either knowledge or common sense in managing their own sexual lives, they don’t have much to offer the younger generation on the subject – other than “do as I say, not as I do.”