WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found the federal government does not review the content of the major abstinence-only programs for scientific or medical accuracy, United States Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced legislation today to require that federally-funded sex education/abstinence programs teach medically accurate and factual information.

“Teenagers should not be misled about basic facts, and denied potentially life-saving health information,” said Senator Lautenberg. “In light of the report’s findings, I am calling on Congress to adopt my legislation to require all federally-funded abstinence programs to provide factual information.”

Last year, Lautenberg offered an amendment to FY 2006 spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that would have prohibited federal funding for any abstinence-only programs that include inaccurate medical information. The amendment was stripped out of the legislation during final negotiations by House Republicans.

During the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of federally funded programs using curricula that provide medically inaccurate or misleading information. Some of these medical inaccuracies include teaching young people that HIV can be transmitted by sweat and tears, citing failure rates of condoms as high as 69 percent, as well as giving inaccurate symptoms and outcomes of sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, the federally funded programs provided erroneous information about basic scientific facts, such as stating that human cells have 24 chromosomes from each parent when in fact the number is 23.

The GAO Report found that HHS does not review the content of the major abstinence-only education programs for accuracy. The report also found that almost no scientific evidence supports the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, and GAO discovered that HHS is using questionable performance measures to assess the largest abstinence-only programs. Finally, GAO’s General Counsel found in a recent legal opinion that HHS is statutorily bound by law requiring medical accuracy in information on condoms. (B-308128)

Today, Lautenberg introduced the Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act. There is companion legislation in the House introduced by Rep Luis Gutierrez,(D-IL) and Jim Moran (D-VA). The GAO Report can be found on their website, and is titled “Abstinence Education: Efforts to Assess the Accuracy and Effectiveness of Federally Funded Programs” (GAO-07-87).