CDC Knew About Condoms' Limitations, Doctors Say

Tuesday, July 24, 2001
By Kelley Beaucar

A group of doctors Tuesday claimed that the federal government,
specifically the Centers for Disease Control, has for at least a year
suppressed a study about the effectiveness of condoms.
The doctors claim that the government has known about the limitations of
condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases but
nevertheless mounted a campaign that deliberately misrepresented the risks
in sex education curricula and public health programs.

"The entire public health model developed by the CDC and based on the idea
that condoms offer protection, is a lie," said Dr. Hall Wallis,
a member of consortium. "The skeleton is now out of the closet."

At a Washington, D.C., news conference, the 10,000-member Physicians
Consortium claimed that the CDC has known for years that condoms offer
little protection against sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea,
chlamydia, syphilis and genital herpes.
Word of the condoms’ shortfalls came in a panel report released Friday by
the National Institutes of Health.

The NIH panel concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" that
condoms protect against STDs.