Panel Finds Misinformation in White House Web Site on Teenagers

Negative Messages About Gays, Sex, Single Parents Criticized, as Well as Lack of Information on Alcohol

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer

A government Web site intended to help parents and teenagers make "smart choices about their health and future" includes inaccurate or misleading information that may alienate some families or prompt riskier behavior, according to a team of medical experts who reviewed the material.

Three physicians and a child psychologist analyzed the Bush administration's 4Parents.gov Web site and concluded it made many incorrect assertions about condoms, sexual orientation, single-parent households and the dangers of oral sex.

They also found omissions of information that could go a long way toward raising healthy young adults, such as warning against the dangers of drinking alcohol.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a frequent administration critic who solicited the analyses, said the site is the latest example of "the distortion of scientific information" in favor of a conservative ideology focused predominantly on promoting abstinence-until-marriage programs.

"A federally-funded website should present the facts as they are, not as you might wish them to be," Waxman wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "It is wrong -- and ultimately self-defeating -- to sacrifice scientific accuracy in an effort to frighten teens and their parents."

Bushco, misinformation central!

Thanks, TomPaine.common sense.

Semper Fi