Video: Sex, drugs and the politics of clean needles

Elizabeth Pisani
Special to CNN

"We will restore science to its rightful place."

When those words came out of President Obama's mouth during his inaugural speech, public health nerds such as myself rejoiced heartily. We believe that policy, especially health policy, should be based on scientific evidence. Funny, then, that we ignore this important piece of evidence: When scientific facts go up against moral ideologies, ideology usually wins.

I've worked for more than a decade in the field of HIV prevention. That means working with sex and drugs - two areas where there is no shortage of good science, and an abundance of ideology.

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