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The message delivered to female students at Wellesley College in a recent lecture was worthy of headlines in the feminist Boston Globe: "Sexism in Public Health—Information That Disproportionately Affects Women Is Being Repressed" The reason the Globe won't print those headlines, however, is because the lecture was about a true case of sexism perpetrated by liberals and the messenger was John Diggs, Jr. M.D., a frequent commentator on health and human sexuality from a pro-abstinence, pro-life viewpoint. Some examples of women's health issues that are downplayed or repressed, according to Diggs:
Why Is Diggs Interested? How did Dr. Diggs, a specialist in internal medicine, become interested in this topic? He told the women he realized something was wrong when patients who were raised on the idea of safe sex were having problems that indicated to him there wasn't much safe about what they were doing. Diggs did some research and found that while public health sources were a good repository of data, those same sources recommended that condoms and birth control pills were the way to make all sex-related problems suddenly disappear. "My own eyes were telling me this wasn't true," said Diggs. He wanted to find out why things weren't happening the way public health sources predicted. The data from those sources was good, the recommendations were bankrupt, he realized. According to him, promiscuity has more serious effects on women than men, yet public health officials encourage promiscuity by recommending contraception and abortion while repressing vital information about the side effects of those prescribed remedies. Sacrificing women's health to political correctness is sexism, said Diggs. Predatory males couldn't have designed it better, he said. Men have always been asking for sex, and women have always said, "No, not without a commitment." The doctor says we have made sex recreational and we expect women to be more like men by suppressing their natural instincts against promiscuousness. Women pay the price. "When you put this whole picture together," he says, "you have a system that has consistently and repeatedly played down the risks involved in sex for women while at the same time telling women that, 'We are looking out for your own good.'" Condoms Don't Stop Sexual Virus Infecting Millions There's a sexually transmitted disease that kills more women than AIDS, said Diggs. It's called cervical cancer, which is essentially a complication of a sexually transmitted disease. Almost all cervical cancer victims have the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country, bar none, he said. Every year in the U.S., 15,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and approximately 5000 die of the disease. In the meantime, 3500 women die from AIDS annually. "You know everything there is to know about HIV, most students know nothing about HPV," said Diggs. What is the big difference? "Not a whole lot of men get cervical cancer, a whole lot of men get HIV. There are thousands of women across the country that have been treated for cervical cancer and have never been told this is essentially a complication from a sexually transmitted disease. They don't know. To me, this represents sexism. You are treating the lives of men as if they're more valuable than the lives of women." Millions of women are infected with HPV each year. It is highly contagious. Symptoms may not show until years later. A woman finds out that she has HPV when her doctor reports an abnormal Pap smear. Usually there is a 7- to 20-year gap between HPV infection and cervical cancer, but it is not unheard of for 18-year-olds to get cervical cancer. Pap smears are a common screening tool for women, but HPV is sexually transmitted by both men and women so only half the population is getting screened. It gets worse, said Diggs. "Science shows HPV is not stopped by condoms. We've been pushing condoms around the world for the last twenty years as a way to stop STD's," he said. A cigarette pack warns you that smoking can cause cancer. Yet, a friend from Oklahoma, who is a general practitioner and was a Congressman for six years, introduced a bill in congress about three years ago to put a simple warning on condom boxes saying condoms do not stop HPV, which causes cervical cancer. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology opposed the labeling bill... "They see themselves as the protectors of the basic health of women. Something is wrong here," Diggs said. "So, looking at the picture as a whole, we have just this one sexually transmitted disease that I'm talking about, which disproportionately affects women and causes cervical cancer which men don't get. It kills more women than HIV does. HIV gets all the attention, all the money for research, and we won't as much as label condoms so that when student health centers say, 'If you're going to have sex, you need some of these,' women will know that condoms will not stop this disease." Diggs said he cannot get much attention from student health centers. "They want to keep on feeling good about handing out condoms," he said. So you take the condoms because you don't want to get pregnant, said Diggs. You get your degree, get married and settle down at thirty years old because you've already sown your wild oats, and then you have an abnormal Pap smear. "That school health nurse from ten or twelve years ago doesn't have the foggiest idea that what she recommended to you led to your current predicament. "How does this work? Condom distribution affects people's behavior. If you think something is safe, or causes an inherently dangerous thing to become safe, you are more likely to do the dangerous thing," said Diggs. "You think you are home-free until you turn thirty and get that abnormal Pap smear." The National Institute for Health released a study two years ago that found no evidence of condom effectiveness against six diseases, said Diggs. One of those diseases, Chlamydia, causes sterility in women even if treated, while a male who gets treated will be fine. "Shouldn't women know about this? Isn't it only fair that women know about this? That seems pretty basic to me. I don't think I am asking a whole lot." Conception Vs Contraception There has been an attempt to redefine conception in the last ten or fifteen years to say that conception happens not at fertilization, but ten days to two weeks later, when the embryo implants in the uterus, says Dr. Diggs. Why redefine conception? Because, said Diggs, methods we call contraceptive in many cases work as abortifacients after conception. Even birth control pills work this way an indeterminate number of times. They abort an already conceived 46-chromosome human being. Shouldn't women who might have moral objections to abortion at least be told about this, he asked? A sperm and egg each has 23 chromosomes, explained Diggs. Human beings have 46 chromosomes at conception when the egg is fertilized. After that, no other information is added. That separate and unique set of 46 chromosomes never existed before and will never exist again. If that were all, at least it is something you can't see and you can call it theoretical, said Diggs. But there is more. Depo-Provera Depo-Provera, sometimes called "The Shot," was one of many long-acting contraceptives designed to deal with the problem of people who miss taking their birth-control pill. At this point it is specifically targeted at young inner city black and Hispanic women. If they miss taking the pill, you can't do anything about that, but if they don't keep their appointment for the shot, it's not too late to call them up and have them come in. Planned Parenthood is very proud of having increased the rates of Depo-Provera use, said Diggs, but there is a serious problem with the drug: The rate of breast cancer is doubled in women who take the Depo-Provera shot. Depo-Provera has an R.R. of 2.0 in regards to breast cancer, according to the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR). The initials R.R. mean "relative risk." A relative risk of 2.0 means the experimental group has twice the rate of the control group. Diggs said he has a problem with releasing a drug on the market that doubles the risk of breast cancer. He said he can't picture a men's drug being released if it knowingly doubled the risk of cancer. But that is not all. "Women are not told that Depo-Provera will double their chances of breast cancer," said Diggs. "What about the basic medical ethic of informed consent?" Diggs said it is unconscionable to give dangerous drugs to healthy women and at the very least they should be informed of what is happening. Ironically, at the same time that The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology puts up pink ribbons on their website for breast cancer, they are pushing Depo-Provera, said Diggs. "Hey, either way, they get paid." Diggs made the observation that we think it is wrong for boys to use dangerous steroids to make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex, yet we say its okay for girls to take steroids to make themselves more attractive through sexual availability. ABC: Abortion = Breast Cancer Dr. Diggs said scientific data published around the world suggests there is a 50 to 100 percent increase in the rates of breast cancer for women who abort their first child. "The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology wants to deny this. The National Cancer Institute had it on their website that this is likely to happen, and then they removed it. "The American Cancer Society denies it altogether, despite the fact that 28 out of 35 studies done worldwide support this." The New England Journal of Medicine used a flawed study from Denmark to deny that this occurs, said Diggs. The study diluted statistics by mixing younger women with older women as subjects. If a woman gets an abortion at twenty, said Diggs, she will not get breast cancer when she is 25 years-old, she will get it at 40 or 45 or later. The study also lumped together women who had abortions with those who had miscarriages. Diggs said the mechanism that causes increased breast cancer from abortion appears to be that when a woman gets pregnant, certain hormone levels go up that cause an increase and growth of breast tissue cells. Inducing an abortion cuts off the hormone supply that allows those cells to continue to mature. Cells that are immature are more likely to become cancerous. A miscarriage does not have the same effect because there are fewer hormones and other abnormalities in those circumstances. At the least, said Diggs, women seeking abortions should be told by doctors that they think there is a problem down the road with breast cancer. Abortion Safer Than Childbirth? What about the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth? How do we know what is safe? In the 1940's, people used to x-ray their feet to fit themselves for shoes. Now we know x-rays cause cancer, so no more unnecessary x-rays. While there are more maternal deaths during childbirth, you don't just determine the safety of something by its immediate impact on you, said Diggs. Many more women are dead from abortion a year later, he said. They die from suicides and accidents related to post-abortion stress syndrome. Diggs marveled how abortion is not held to common medical standards. People who've had abortions come to him a day or two later with medical problems related to their abortion. "Why are they coming to me?" he said. "If you have your appendix taken out and you have a problem, you call up your surgeon. Why don't women who have abortions call the abortionist? Because they are always told if there is any problem, go to the emergency room or to a nearby clinic. They don't follow the very standard behavior that every physician will perform that's doing surgery. "Why aren't abortion clinics regulated? Why don't they have Joint Commission (one of the regulatory agencies) inspections to make sure they are using correct sterile equipment and correct procedures? "They are not required to. If this is truly a women's health issue, if this is truly an issue of public health, why would you lower the standard for something that specifically and uniquely affects women, rather than raise it? "This is the height of sexism in public health." What to Do About Sexism in Public Health Can something be done about it? Yes. By spreading information, which is available from a variety of sources. "My sources are top notch sources. The Journal of the American Medical Association, Center for Disease Control, National Institute for Health, and all I did was take their very same information and come to very different conclusions. "To me the most important person that I'm taking care of as I do my work is the person sitting in front of me. Not some theoretical 'the public,' it's the person sitting in front of me. And very often, if you take care of the person, it's going to have the desired effect on the public."
Sidebar: Dr. Diggs told Wellesley College students that campus speech codes and political correctness can affect their worldview. For someone born post Roe v. Wade, he said, it is hard to believe that for much of American history, abortion and even contraception were illegal and considered immoral by society in general. Attitudes began to change after Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, presented contraception as a good thing. Sanger formed the "Negro Project" back in the 20's and 30's. The project was specifically designed to get blacks to accept contraception as a good thing that would improve their lot in life. Sanger convinced black clergymen to promote contraception to their parishioners. She did this to deflect suspicion that the project was designed to decrease the black population. "It isn't just a conspiratorial idea, that's what she was trying to do," said Diggs. "This is plainly stated in her own words: 'The purpose of the American Birth Control League,' as it was originally called, 'was to lower the number of undesirables.'" The idea, called Eugenics, was spread throughout Europe and was the underlying precept for Hitler's elimination of undesirables, said Diggs. "My evidence that Planned Parenthood still does this and believes this is that one of the highest awards they give out to people is the Margaret Sanger Award," he said. Diggs said that Alfred Kinsey also corrupted the way sex is viewed by people today. Kinsey was a zoologist who studied human sex and came up with unsupported conclusions that had a profound effect on the world of law, medicine and education. Kinsey concluded that sex had no spiritual element whatsoever, but was purely a biological function. Diggs said he could quickly prove there is a spiritual element to human sexuality. Dogs don't care if their mating partner mates with another dog the next day. With humans, however, there is clearly a difference. This is key to understanding that sex between animals is dramatically different than between human beings, he said. Kinsey's oft-repeated erroneous conclusions, according to Diggs, were:
Kinsey's ideas of sex outside marriage had dramatically more serious effects on women than on men, said Diggs. Also, Kinsey's ideas changed the law. Rape used to be a capital offense. Now a rapist is likely to get probation if he is prosecuted at all, and increasingly it doesn't matter if the victim is an adult or a child. Diggs mentioned the recent example in the news of Superior Court Judge Maria Lopez, who outraged the public when she said the abduction and attempted rape of a boy was a low-level case. In that vein, one of the co-founders of Planned Parenthood, Mary Calderone, who served on both Kinsey's and PP's board, said the problem with adults abusing children is not the abuse itself, but people's reaction to it, according to Diggs.
Sidebar: Dr. Diggs calls the years 1960 to 1975 the "Golden Age of Sex," when people felt safe in the knowledge that antibiotics and birth control pills were the "cure" to any sex-related consequences. Then in 1975, incurable sexually transmittable diseases began to be discovered-Herpes, Human Pappiloma Virus, and HIV (AIDS). HIV was predominately a homosexual disease for many years, said Diggs. Homosexual men with simple infections were dying. These were men who by the time they were 25 years old had sex with 2000 people. The disease was called G.R.I.D. at first (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) until the name was changed because it was not politically correct. Even though it was known to be blood related, we did not tell homosexual men to refrain from donating blood because of political correctness, "What they did do was say we need safe sex," said Diggs. "This is where the term 'safe sex' came from. It did not come because somebody at the CDC was trying to protect college girls or boys from STD's that they pass to each other. This came about because they were trying to come up with a name or a methodology by which people who were HIV positive could continue to participate in sex. Safe sex at first consisted of dry kissing, walks in the park, cuddling and other things along those lines, said Diggs. "It had nothing to do with what we call sex. The term eventually morphed into meaning sexual intercourse with a latex condom." Diggs said although AIDS was a uniformly fatal, sexually-transmitted disease, we did not have the public health chutzpah to close bathhouses where people went for promiscuous sex. This was done for a variety of other STD's, he said, and even during a measles epidemic you could be quarantined. "Even I as a physician exposed to patient's blood would not be able to test a person to find out if I was going to get AIDS, because it was treated as a political issue rather than a public health one." |
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Relationships between STD's and cervical cancer.