I’m late on this but this is good… very good:

After decades of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new H.I.V. test on Tuesday that for the first time makes it possible for Americans to learn in the privacy of their homes whether they are infected.

The availability of an H.I.V. test as easy to use as a home-pregnancy kit is yet another step in the normalization of a disease that was once seen as a mark of shame and a death sentence.

The OraQuick test, by OraSure Technologies, uses a mouth swab and gives results in 20 to 40 minutes. A previous test sold over the counter required a user to prick a finger and mail a drop of dried blood to a lab.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the longtime AIDS researcher and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the new test a “positive step forward” and one that could help bring the 30-year-old epidemic under control.

Getting an infected person onto antiretroviral drugs lowers by as much as 96 percent the chance that he or she will transmit the virus to someone else, so testing and treatment have become crucial to prevention. About 20 percent of the 1.2 million infected Americans do not know they have the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and about 50,000 more get infected each year.

Good question:

Between 1996 and 2009, taxpayers spent more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only education, paid for by federal grants and state matching funds, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). In 2004, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released a report that found that these programs often contained false or distorted information about sex and reproductive health, such as claiming that condoms have a high failure rate at preventing HIV and pregnancy, women who have abortions have a high risk of becoming sterile, and HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears.

Shortly after taking office, Obama moved to cut off federal funding for most abstinence-only education.

However, during the intense negotiations over the health-care-reform bill in 2009 and 2010, Congress attached a $250 million grant program for abstinence-only instruction (granting up to $50 million annually, through 2014). Under the program, state health departments apply for abstinence funding and can then allocate sub-awards to various organizations across the state, including county health departments, schools, community groups, and faith-based nonprofits.

Between this and Amendment 1 in North Carolina, sometimes I wonder if we’re just hopeless:

When the subject is sexuality, facts have a pretty poor reputation in America. The media, cynical politicians, and various pressure groups get tremendous benefits from misinforming — and frightening — the American public. And when someone speaks up with the facts, they’re often shouted down, dismissed as simply having a personal belief. Bill O’Reilly is famous for equating a progressive’s facts with his own, albeit differing, opinion.

2. Sex education

Myth: Talking about sex honestly and using the proper names for body parts inflames kids’ curiosity; teaching them about sexual decision-making and safer sex encourages them to have sex.

Science: Young people taught comprehensive sexuality information that does not focus on promoting fear or religious messages tend to postpone their first intercourse, are more likely to use condoms the first time they have intercourse, and tend to have fewer sexual partners.

6. Pornography

Myth: Consuming pornography leads men to be more sexually violent.

Science: According to the FBI, in the 11 years since the Internet has flooded America with porn, the rates of sexual violence have decreased. And while crimes of sexual violence are typically under-reported, there is no reason to think that under-reporting has increased; in fact, public awareness campaigns have almost certainly decreased the under-reporting.

But you know… who needs facts?

Awesome interview with Dan Savage. ‘Savage U’ is probably the best show on MTV since… since a long time:

At what point did you decide to branch out into radio, TV, speaking tours, etc? Were those ventures deliberate moves on your part or did other outlets just start coming to you?

People began reaching out to me. I get letters every day from people asking me how to syndicate a column — because obviously I must know since I have one — and I have no idea how you syndicate a column. I started writing a column and people started contacting me, asking me if they could run it too. I never got out there really and marketed the column. The person I’m doing the television show with, Brian Pines of Hypomania Content, he was trying to get a meeting with me for two years before I would have lunch with him. And even then, he had to fly up to Seattle to meet with me — I wasn’t going to fly down to L.A. I’m too lazy and self-hating and self-loathing to run around in circles and saying, “They ought to put me on television.” Brian had to convince me to go out there and do this, and I’m glad that he managed to do that.

You’ve said that Savage U aims to counter the fact that young people don’t get good sex education. How much do you think the media is to blame for that?

I don’t think the media is to blame for it. I think politicians are to blame for it. I think there’s cowardice. There’s not a lot of good sex ed. on television, but television I don’t think is the venue. I don’t think television, the medium, is charged with providing young people with good sex education. I think that’s parents and schools and [students are] failed by it. There was just another bill passed in Tennessee; any kind of sex ed. is abstinence-only, and this new abstinence-only education in Tennessee has to encourage children from gateway sexual activities like hand holding. I read about it and said they should just start calling these bills the “Dan Savage Employment Protection Act of 2012.” I will never be out of work so long as politicians keep churning out kids who have no info and don’t know their holes from asses in the ground. I will be employed. We need good sex ed. in the schools. That’s about parents and teachers, politicians and churches. I don’t think that’s about the media.

Of course, read the entire thing because Dan Savage fucking rules.

*hangs head*:

1. The Netherlands

The Netherlands has a reputation for being one of the most pro-sex countries in the world, and it isn’t hard to understand why. From comprehensive sex education to legal prostitution (Amsterdam has one of Europe’s most famous red light districts) to nude and topless beaches, the Netherlands is a social conservative’s worst nightmare. On top of that, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage (the Netherlands legalized same-sex civil unions in 1998 and gay marriage in 2001). But while Rick Santorum would no doubt view Amsterdam and Rotterdam as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, the reality is that all that sexual openness is having positive results in the Netherlands. Sociologist Amy Schalet (author of “Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex” and a professor at the University of Massachusetts) has done extensive sex-related research on the United States and the Netherlands, often asserting that Americans would be much better off if they had the sexual openness of the Dutch.

And the data bears that out. The United Nations reported that in 2009, the Netherlands had a teen birth rate of 5.3 per 1,000 compared to 39.1 per 1,000 in the United States that year (teen birth rates provided by the United Nations, the Guttmacher Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Advocates for Youth and other organizations typically look at females in the 15–19 age group). Advocates for Youth has reported that the Netherlands had an abortion rate of 8.8 per 1,000 in 2006 compared to 14.8 per 1,000 in the United States in 2007 (abortion rates, as a rule, are based on the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44). And Advocates for Youth has also reported that in 2009, the United States had three times as many adults living with HIV or AIDS as the Netherlands (0.2 percent in the Netherlands compared to 0.6 percent in the United States). Also, in 2006, there were roughly 13 cases of gonorrhea per 100,000 Netherlands residents in the 15–19 age group compared to roughly 458 per 100,000 in the United States that year. So when it comes to sexual health, the United States is clearly dropping the ball compared to the Netherlands.

If you like depressing yourself like I do, read about the rest of the countries on this list…

This should keep ‘16 & Pregnant’ on air for a few more years:

New CDC data show a leveling off of the number of middle and high schools that are teaching their students about how to prevent HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy.

Researchers analyzed data from 45 states in 2008 and again in 2010. They asked the principal and the head health teacher at each school how often they taught students about specific topics pertaining to the prevention of HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy.

According to the study, the percentage of middle schools teaching 11 topics on HIV, STD, and pregnancy prevention in 2010 was lower in 11 states and higher in none compared with 2008 results.

There were widespread differences across the states as to what they did and did not include in their sexual education curriculum. For example, the importance of using condoms consistently and correctly was taught in 26.8% of public high schools in Utah and 96.6% of high schools in Delaware in 2010.

“Little progress has been made in the proportion of middle and high schools that offer education on the prevention of HIV, many STDs, and pregnancy,” says study author Laura Kann, PhD. She is a researcher at the CDC in Atlanta. “We are heading in the wrong direction.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a number of sexual health organizations including the Kaiser Family Foundation and Planned Parenthood Federation of America are observing STD Awareness Month this month, and are offering a number of resources for educators, parents, and young people at the CDC’s STD Awareness Resource Site.

The best of those resources are the Kaiser Family Foundation’s websites ItsYourSexLife.com and GYTnow.org (GYT stands for Get Yourself Tested). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “1 in 2 sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the age of 25. Most won’t know it.” A related and equally chilling stat cited in the GYT campaign materials: 1 in 5 people living with HIV in the U.S. doesn’t know it.

So fucking irresponsible:

About 1 in 5 pharmacies incorrectly denies teen girls access to emergency contraception (EC), or the “morning after pill,” according to a new study.

Posing as either 17-year-old girls or doctors seeking Plan B emergency contraception for their 17-year-old patients, researchers from Boston University called 943 drugstores — every pharmacy listed in five major U.S. cities. Eighty percent of the pharmacies said they stocked the drug.

By law, teenagers aged 17 and older can buy Plan B over the counter, but 19% of pharmacists told teenage callers they could not purchase it because of their age. Three percent of doctors were similarly told emergency contraception could not be given to 17-year-olds.

When asked whether they knew the legal age for Plan B access, only 57% of pharmacy employees answered correctly to teens; 61% answered correctly to doctors. Not surprisingly, teens were twice as likely as physicians to wait on hold, and four times less likely to be connected to a pharmacist to answer their questions.

Where can I sign up for this?:

If I were going to describe the perfect contraceptive, it would go something like this: no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness. The funny thing is, something like that currently exists.

The procedure called RISUG in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years. A doctor applies some local anesthetic, makes a small pinhole in the base of the scrotum, reaches in with a pair of very thin forceps, and pulls out the small white vas deferens tube. Then, the doctor injects the polymer gel (called Vasalgel here in the US), pushes the vas deferens back inside, repeats the process for the other vas deferens, puts a Band-Aid over the small hole, and the man is on his way. If this all sounds incredibly simple and inexpensive, that’s because it is. The chemicals themselves cost less than the syringe used to administer them. But the science of what happens next is the really fascinating part.

Read the entire article, this procedure is fucking fascinating and not enough people know about it.

For everyone that owns one, this is where it comes from:

Beginning in 1869, inventors developed steam-powered massage machines for medical offices. By 1900, doctors had a wide variety of devices to choose from, helping relieve the tedium of digitally massaging female patients. Even better from medical professionals’ perspective was the invention of a hand-held vibrator in 1905, allowing women to treat their own hysteria without visiting a physician. Soon, companies began advertising for the home vibrators, using slogans such as “all the pleasures of youth…will throb within you.” The home vibrators made economic sense for women as even the higher-end models cost no more than five or so visits to the doctor. Moral police officers worried that the home device would “accomplish little more than the titillation of the tissues.” Nonetheless, they proved quite popular with middle-class women whose homes had the electricity needed to operate the vibrators.

Despite the very real physical relief offered by vibrators, many doctors preferred to believe the vibrator was an asexual device. The medical profession thought sexuality only manifested itself in the penetration of a woman’s vagina by a penis. In late Victorian America, men saw middle-class women as adverse to sex which both facilitated men’s visits to the plethora of brothels in the cities and reinforced the idea of women provided a civilizing effect on men corrupted by the rough-and-tumble streets. When seemingly “pure” women did want sex, it was for reasons of maternal needs, not pleasure. That vaginal penetration did not please these women simply meant they lacked a sexual nature. At least one scholar does argue that doctors of the time did in fact recognize the reality of a clitoral orgasm, so we do not have a consensus on the matter. 

Check out the entire article if you’re a sexual history nerd like am.