Ten public health researchers have asked Congress to reduce funding for abstinence education, according to The Washington Times.

“We want to see that the best programs are used” and that “they’re based on science,” said Dr. Santelli, a department chairman at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

The letter warned that the programs withhold “potentially life-saving information” about birth control and ignore the health needs of homosexual, bisexual and transgender youth.

According to the article, the federal government spends about $213 million in abstinence education. The Democrat-led Congress added $28 million to the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program in the 2008 funding bill for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments.

President Bush recently vetoed the $606 billion bill because it had too much in discretionary spending. The House failed to override the veto and lawmakers are reworking the bill.

You can view a related post about recent studies examining the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.

Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton vowed Thursday to boost U.S. spending on HIV/AIDS prevention and encourage abstinence and the use of condoms to eradicate it, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Part of the solution, she said, is to teach “abstinence, be faithful and use condoms if necessary.”

At the Global Summit on AIDS event, reiterated a $50-billion plan announced days ago to fight AIDS and malaria.

The plan would increase U.S. spending to fight AIDS by about 20%, according to David Bryden, a spokesman for the Global Aids Alliance. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have committed to the same funding proposal, he said.

Other presidential candidates weighed via a video about their stances on AIDS prevention and sex education.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney and Arizona Sen. McCain praised AIDS-fighting efforts initiated by President Bush, with McCain saying he would favor continuing an “abstinence-only approach” to education about sex and sexually transmitted diseases in U.S. humanitarian efforts abroad.

For more detail about the various presidential candidates’ stances on sex education, please see this related post. The Kaiser Network’s presidential news and analysis Web site gives a good overview of Clinton’s speech and other news outlets’ coverage.