NEWS RELEASE: Sunday June 12

EXCLUSIVE: Investigate magazine calling for a Commission of Inquiry into a new ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ by the Health Ministry.

New Zealand’s No Rubba, No Hubba safe sex campaign is dangerously inaccurate and may in fact be causing an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, according to new research published by Investigate magazine.

In an unprecedented, fourteen page, investigation published in the latest issue, the magazine alleges the Ministry of Health has plunged taxpayer funds into “safe sex” or “safer sex” campaigns for the past five years despite a growing avalanche of medical journal studies showing condoms don’t protect against sexually transmitted diseases, and that teenagers and adults may be using condoms thinking they’re protected when they’re not. The magazine is calling it a new ‘Unfortunate Experiment” using more than a million New Zealanders as guinea pigs.

Drawing on the latest research published in prestigious medical journals like JAMA, BMJ, Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, AIDS Journal, the US National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organisation, Investigate’s Ian Wishart and James Morrow have blown the lid on a debate that has so far been confined to medical circles – condoms don’t work. One study, in the British Medical Journal, actually directly showed that an increased use of condoms resulted in a significant increase in STDs among those consistently using condoms.

For around 20 years New Zealand health officials and family planning clinics have pushed the “safe sex” message about the need to use condoms to avoid STDs,” says Investigate editor Ian Wishart. “While that seemed like a good idea, it should have been abandoned or seriously modified five years ago when the first major medical studies on condom effectiveness started coming in, because they show condoms just don’t work.”

In recent weeks, the Ministry of Health has said that the Hubba campaign was such a success it will be run again, at the same time as the release of more data showing a massive increase in STDs in New Zealand, and a third study that made front page news when it revealed many Christchurch teenagers are not using condoms and don’t think they’ll catch an STD.

“The combination of those three events has seen a concerted push by the Health Ministry to promote condom use as an antidote to STD infection,” says Wishart, “but all the expert international data is screaming out that the Health Ministry’s approach is not just wrong, but dangerous and well out of date. Furthermore, it now appears likely that our huge STD rate may be a direct result of teenagers using condoms, thinking they’re protected, having more sex and catching more diseases because health officials won’t face the truth.”

Examples of the international studies include confirmation that condoms may offer no protection at all against the virus that causes genital warts and cervical cancer. Specifically, the World Health Organisation put out a bulletin last year advising “No published prospective study has found protection against genital human papilloma virus HPV infection.” Yet, despite the WHO warning, the Hubba website lists genital warts as one of the STDs condoms can protect people from.

The Hubba site also says condoms will protect against Chlamydia, Herpes and gonorrhea, which also flies in the face of the international studies. In some cases, protection may be zero even if a condom is always used properly, and at best the studies have found only a 50% reduction in disease rates among condom users compared with people who never used condoms.

Wishart put the allegations and research directly to the Ministry of Health, but despite admitting the research shows there’s a problem the Ministry sees no reason to modify its sexual health promotions or warn young people that condoms have been shown to offer no protection against many STDs.

“The Ministry of Health is in a state of denial” Wishart says. “Young people making choices about having sex have a right to know that condoms don’t protect against disease, but the Ministry feels that even a 50% reduction is worth continuing the safe sex myth. Investigate is alleging that the Ministry of Health is breaching rules of informed consent. When teenagers are repeatedly told that condoms protect against disease, and details of a 100% failure rate are hidden from them, then the Ministry is conducting a new ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ without consent. And when cervical cancer can be fatal, and some of the other diseases cause lifelong infertility and health problems, that kind of experiment is abhorrent social engineering.”

Investigate is calling for the Hubba campaign to be suspended pending a formal inquiry into how much the Health Ministry knew about condom risks, and when it found out. Wishart also believes people who’ve relied on condoms should urgently get an STD check, given the high risk of infection combined with the lack of symptoms for some STDS.

MAIN POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN DEBATING THIS STORY:

1. Investigate is not suggesting that condoms should be abandoned. Rather, we strongly believe that all existing family planning and sexual health literature produced by the Ministry of Health should be altered to clearly state the levels of protection condoms are currently known to offer against various STDS, so that users can make choices based on informed consent. The Ministry of Health told Investigate it believed infection rates would be reduced up to 98% (the failure level of condoms for pregnancy). The real figure is from zero protection up to 50% as a best case scenario. There are actually greater odds of catching a sexual disease while using a condom than there are of developing lung cancer from smoking. No matter how the Ministry tries to spin it, that’s a reality based on the international studies available.

2. The Ministry of Health will argue that the WHO is still urging the use of condoms. This is true, but for different reasons from those being debated. The WHO, having been at the heart of “safe sex” for two decades, is desperate to save face. Additionally, it is looking not at individual risks but total population risks. It is true that a 50% reduction in infection risk is a good thing at a population level if it can be sustained (although the studies to date appear to indicate that the public indulges in more sex, assuming condoms are safe, therefore increasing the overall rate of disease regardless). However, a 50% reduction in risk is still a one in two chance of infection for an individual over time, and unless teenagers are explicitly told this then they cannot make a genuinely informed choice about their own sexual behaviour. It is not ethical to knowingly leave individuals at a high risk of contracting STDs, just because you are concentrating on a reduction in overall population incidence of disease.

3. The MoH and WHO arguments in favour of population incidence conveniently ignore the very real evidence that while condom use is far higher than it was two decades ago, our STD rates are hundreds of times higher in some cases. In other words, just as the British Medical Journal found, despite greater use of condoms, we’re catching more diseases. In our view it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that this could well be cause and effect: if condoms don’t actually work, but people rely on them, they may not be as cautious about choosing their sexual partners, wrongly assuming that a condom will protect them.

4. The Ministry of Health will argue that evidence for condom failure on STDs is “scanty”. This is nothing but spin. We cited numerous studies, the MoH could only cite one. If our evidence is “scanty”, then the evidence supporting MoH is non-existent. While it is true that only around three dozen medical studies have so far been completed, not one shows that condoms work any better than around 50% risk reduction. Additionally, the only study the MoH was able to cite to Investigate in its defence was irrelevant, because it dealt with the HIV virus, which is transported in seminal fluid. Condoms, of course, are expected to prevent seminal fluid from passing through so it is no surprise that condoms work to help prevent HIV.

5. Regardless of how “scanty” the MoH thinks the evidence is, it is still the best evidence in the world. In Investigate’s opinion, they are putting lives and public health at risk by trying to hold out until a friendly study comes along. In five years, there hasn’t been one, and New Zealand is now in the middle of an STD epidemic. How many more teenagers must be infected, how many more women will develop fatal cervical cancer, simply because the MoH is wedded to out of date theories that don’t work?

6. Investigate is not pushing abstinence. Although the MoH suggested we had raised abstinence in our interview, the taped transcript clearly shows the topic was only raised by the MoH. We recognise that people are sexually active, however we believe the public has a right to know the real risks of relying on condoms, regardless of whether that means an embarrassing backdown for the sexual health industry.

7. The MoH will argue that it doesn’t push “safe sex”, only “safer sex”. The Ministry is playing word games. The clear inference from the Hubba website is that people should rely on condoms to protect themselves from STDs. The medical studies show that condoms are next to useless against all STDs except HIV. The “safer sex” campaign implies a protection rate of up to 98%, as openly suggested by the MoH in the interview with Investigate. Not in their wildest dreams could “safer sex” be used to describe the zero protection that condoms offer against some diseases, and nowhere in the Hubba website is this inconvenient fact clearly stated.

8. The MoH will urge the media to contact members of its expert advisory panel and key figures in sexual health clinics. Our response: many of these people have had a direct influence in bringing the current dodgy campaign to our TV screens. Always go back to the medical studies themselves that we’ve cited, the cold hard facts. It doesn’t matter what opinion you try to put on it, you cannot escape the facts. Yes, the authors of the studies still recommend condoms as a way of reducing overall population infection rates, and we agree – BUT only if New Zealanders are made fully aware of the personal risks they face, and the façade of “safer sex” is confined to the dustbin of bad social engineering where it belongs. New Zealanders, and particularly high school students being indoctrinated with the “safer sex” myth, should not be guinea pigs in a new “Unfortunate Experiment” that’s failed