Earlier this month, La Boheme posted on this Glamour article about how conservatives have waged a campaign of lies that has adversely affected women's health. One of the key lies? Condoms don't protect against HPV.

A few years ago, several conservative congressional legislators asked King K. Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., how well condoms protected against STDs. "They asked whether condoms were effective against everything," says Dr. Holmes, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the world's leading experts on STDs. He told them yes, condoms were especially effective against HIV, and worked well against all STDs with one exception: human papillomavirus, or HPV, a few strains of which can cause cervical cancer. At that time, he said, researchers suspected that condoms did offer some HPV protection, but the data were incomplete.

"That is what they wanted to hear," says Dr. Holmes. "It was clear the goal was to discredit condom use, and this was what they were trying to hang their argument on."

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"Condoms, whether used correctly and consistently or not, do not prevent the spread of HPV," the Family Research Council warns on its website, going on to note that "HPV has been linked to over 90 percent of all invasive cervical cancers and is the number-two cause of cancer deaths among women." In truth, cervical cancer is only the thirteenth-highest cancer killer of women in the U.S., behind bladder and kidney cancer. In the majority of cases, the immune system fights off HPV before people know they have it. Even when precancerous cells develop, they can be detected early by a Pap smear.
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Despite condoms' proven effectiveness against many STDs, especially HIV, conservatives continued to suggest that they were more of a hazard than a help. Just last year, Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., (R-Okla.) went so far as to demand that the FDA place a warning label on every condom package saying condoms don't help protect against HPV. (He was unsuccessful.) The idea, contends Katharine O'Connell, M.D., an ob-gyn and assistant professor at Columbia University in New York City who studies contraception, is to hype the dangers of sex before marriage: Exaggerating condom failure and the risk of HPV "is simplifying the facts for the purposes of manipulating sexual practices," she says. "This is not about condoms. It's all about the sex."
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Dr. McIlhaney told Glamour that in the early days of MISH, he was still working as a physician, not an academic, and did not have the same access to resources as the now-larger organization does today. Nevertheless, he continues to stress condom ineffectiveness against HPV. "I think our conclusions were right," he says. "I was right on almost all of it, and they were wrong." Yet science does not back him up: Last November the FDA reaffirmed that condoms reduce the risk of every major STD including HPV.

Man was he wrong, check out this week's NEJM article on condoms for prevention of HPV transmission.

In women reporting 100 percent condom use by their partners, no cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions were detected in 32 patient-years at risk, whereas 14 incident lesions were detected during 97 patient-years at risk among women whose partners did not use condoms or used them less consistently.
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Our study demonstrates an inverse, temporal association between the frequency of condom use by male partners and the risk of HPV infection in women. The association was strong and increased with the increasing frequency of condom use, suggesting a causal, protective effect. Given that HPV is transmissible through nonpenetrative sexual contact with both male and female partners and that imperfect condom use does occur, it is not surprising that some infections were still detected among women reporting consistent use. It is encouraging, however, that the women in this cohort, who were new to sexual intercourse and condom use, were able to reduce their risk of HPV infection through the consistent use of condoms by male partners. Furthermore, our results suggest that consistent condom use offers similar protection against both high-risk and low-risk types of HPV. Even after the quadrivalent vaccine for HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 becomes available, consistent condom use by their partners may protect women against infection with other high-risk types of HPV that put them at risk for cervical cancer.

Do conservatives ever get tired of being wrong? It's so sad that anyone in this day and age would be so dead-set against birth control that they would mislead people about safe sexual practices that could save lives, prevent STDs and cancer, and reduce unwanted pregnancy. Even Bush supports birth control although he took a year to reply to the question of whether or not he does and only mentions that "adults" should have access to it.