The Wisdom of Whores

Finally, a reporter in Ghana put George Bush on the spot about earmarking over a billion dollars for abstinence-only programmes which Bush’s own scientific advisors say don’t work (recent thoughtful comment here).

Here’s what Bush said:

“I monitor the results,” he said. “And if it looks like it’s not working, then we’ll change. But thus far I can report, at least to our citizens, that the program has been unbelievably effective. And we’re going to stay at it.”

So is it the reporting he’s doing “to our citizens”? And if so, why would he give a different report to “our citizens” than he would to the citizens of Ghana, or any other country where the US is strapping up effective HIV prevention? Or does Bush really mean the funding has been effective “to our citizens”? Perhaps the latter, inasmuch as our citizens benefit from taxes paid by pharmaceutical manufacturers, and they in turn benefit from high sales volumes, for which we need lots of patients, and those are in turn generated by failed HIV prevention approaches.