Top 10 Reasons You Should Be Terrified that "Dr." Eric Keroack Runs Bush's Family Planning Program
January 25, 2007
The following is a guest post from Andrea Lynch, with the kind permission of RH Reality Check.
Not since the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the FDA's reproductive health drugs advisory committee have Americans been so abuzz about an anti-family planning zealot appointed by the Bush administration to a federal body responsible for providing family planning information and services. Just over two months into his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (where he administers $283 million annual budget of federal family planning grants), we are still uncovering evidence of "Doctor" Eric Keroack's staggering lack of credentials. The latest exhibit is "OXYTOCIN: Is this NANO-PEPTIDE a chemical type of HUMAN ‘SUPER-GLUE'?" (emphasis most definitely NOT mine), the PowerPoint presentation that sealed his infamy in the eyes of self-respecting scientists, physicians, and non-crazy people everywhere.
In short, the presentation compiles "evidence" that engaging in pre-marital sex compromises people's (or more specifically, women's) ability to form healthy and lasting relationships. Why? Because, as Keroack argues (or rather, extrapolates from a bunch of studies on mice, voles, and the occasional human female), the more we engage in pre-marital sex, the more failed relationships we have, and the more failed relationships we have, the more we interfere with our body's ability to release and process the "love" hormone oxytocin, and the more we interfere with that process, the more we lose our ability to form healthy, lasting, loving relationships, and as a result, the more miserable and unfulfilled we are. The antidote? Abstinence before marriage, of course.
Or at least that's what I think he's arguing. Truth be told, between the flying leaps of logic, the dense and circuitous argumentation, the distracting reliance on cartoonish graphics and Thomas-Friedman-on-crack mixed metaphors, and the blinding use of caps, italics, "gratuitous quotation marks," multi-colored fonts, and multiple exclamation points and questions marks more worthy of a ransom note than a scientific presentation, I had a hard time even understanding the argument well enough to critique it. However, the following refutations are pretty convincing:
Not since the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the FDA's reproductive health drugs advisory committee have Americans been so abuzz about an anti-family planning zealot appointed by the Bush administration to a federal body responsible for providing family planning information and services. Just over two months into his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (where he administers $283 million annual budget of federal family planning grants), we are still uncovering evidence of "Doctor" Eric Keroack's staggering lack of credentials. The latest exhibit is "OXYTOCIN: Is this NANO-PEPTIDE a chemical type of HUMAN ‘SUPER-GLUE'?" (emphasis most definitely NOT mine), the PowerPoint presentation that sealed his infamy in the eyes of self-respecting scientists, physicians, and non-crazy people everywhere.
In short, the presentation compiles "evidence" that engaging in pre-marital sex compromises people's (or more specifically, women's) ability to form healthy and lasting relationships. Why? Because, as Keroack argues (or rather, extrapolates from a bunch of studies on mice, voles, and the occasional human female), the more we engage in pre-marital sex, the more failed relationships we have, and the more failed relationships we have, the more we interfere with our body's ability to release and process the "love" hormone oxytocin, and the more we interfere with that process, the more we lose our ability to form healthy, lasting, loving relationships, and as a result, the more miserable and unfulfilled we are. The antidote? Abstinence before marriage, of course.
Or at least that's what I think he's arguing. Truth be told, between the flying leaps of logic, the dense and circuitous argumentation, the distracting reliance on cartoonish graphics and Thomas-Friedman-on-crack mixed metaphors, and the blinding use of caps, italics, "gratuitous quotation marks," multi-colored fonts, and multiple exclamation points and questions marks more worthy of a ransom note than a scientific presentation, I had a hard time even understanding the argument well enough to critique it. However, the following refutations are pretty convincing:
