Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Is the issue of why men don’t like to wear condoms worth almost half a million dollars in taxpayer money? That’s the question some government watchdogs are asking over the decision by the National Institutes of Health to pay Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute $423,500 to explore those concerns that keep men from using prophylactics.
Dr. Erick Janssen of the Kinsey Institute argues the study “addresses important public health concerns,” and will examine for the first time men’s claims that condoms cause erectile issues and loss of sensation—key reasons why thousands forego using protection each year.
But David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, isn’t convinced that the grant is smart use of federal dollars. “This government is so out of whack with what the priorities are that this actually makes sense that we’d be wasting money on a condom study rather than the real problems facing the country,” he told Fox News.
NIH distributes almost $30 billion a year to support health research, and the condom-study grant isn’t the first to raise the hackles of Williams and others. Other NIH grants have gone towards studying why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk ($400,000), and teaching prostitutes in China to drink less while having sex on the job ($2.6 million).
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Kinsey Institute Researchers Awarded NIH Grant (Indiana University)
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