DO PROGRAMMES that promote sexual abstinence help cut HIV rates? The question matters, because the US government says they do and . But when Kristen Underhill鈥檚 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 (). A similar lack of success has already been found in abstinence projects in developing countries.
The paper is the second knock to US HIV/AIDS policy in recent weeks. The government also requires that the organisations it funds sign a pledge saying they oppose prostitution. HIV/AIDS organisations say this means they stigmatise groups they are meant to be helping and point towards a recent review which found that HIV programmes that target sex workers are effective in cutting infection rates (PLoS Medicine, ).
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