DO PROGRAMMES that promote sexual abstinence help cut HIV rates? The question matters, because the US government says they do and directs its funding accordingly. But when Kristen Underhill’s team at the University of Oxford, UK, examined the literature, they found that almost all the evidence suggests not.
They studied 13 trials of US-based abstinence programmes and found that none helped to reduce the incidence of unprotected sex or cut the number of partners that young people slept with (BMJ, vol 335, p 248). A similar lack of success has already been found in abstinence projects in developing…
