The Wisdom of Whores

(Source: Youtube via Towleroad)

A study in Mozambique looks at what is killing women during childbirth or over the following 42 days. We tend to think of “maternal mortality” as deaths from haemorrhage or other obstetric complications, but in this case, more women died of infectious diseases than of pregnancy-or-delivery-gone-wrong. And of the infectious diseases, the biggest killer [...]

In a very interesting article the New York Times’ Donald McNeil describes the bad blood that is brewing between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO. The Gates Foundation’s spending on health in developing countries dwarfs that of the WHO, and now the Geneva-based health cops are worried that they are losing their [...]

Ever heard me ranting about “kids-and-AIDS”, “security-and-AIDS”, “fisheries-and-AIDS” and adding despariningly that I’m just waiting for “global-warming-and-AIDS”? Well it’s here. Or at least “global-warming-and-safe-sex” is. Pictured left, the Eco-sexy kit, which will set you back just US$59. For more variety (and some truly artistic hand-blown glass work), check out these eco-friendly sex toys from [...]

Well, those folks at DKT in Indonesia have done it again. Not content to rest on their laurels with the official Democrat Party condom, they’ve now got Indonesia abuzz in anticipation of The Earthquake, a vibrating condom which will be launched on February 23 (but which is available to the cognoscenti of Jakarta from today [...]

It was a good week for science. Well, for open access publishing, which is the future of scientific communication. Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted a thunderous YES to a proposal to publish their academic papers on the internet. The proposal, reproduced below, is a bit hazy on the timing of public posting. [...]

Spanish gay-bashing update: Hundreds of Spaniards protested outside the headquarters of the country’s (un)Popular Party today, demanding that the party leader Mariano Rajoy retract his opposition to adoption rights for gay couples. True to form, the Mayor of Madrd Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón stuck two fingers up at the PP, of which he’s a nominal member, and [...]

From the ever-helpful Kaiser Family Foundation comes a very useful summary of where each of the US presidential candidates stands on HIV issues.
The summaries for Obama and Clinton are so similar that I ran a “compare docs” on them. Besides substituting names and genders (he/she), the only real differences are: Obama supports “comprehensive sex education”, [...]

Check out this new line of footwear for girls on the game. Sexy, fashionable, and with GPS mapping technology. Roll over James Bond — Q never did as much for you!
(Lifted with thanks from the Daily Dish)

I’m aware that my ambivalent attitude towards tracing the sex partners of HIV-infected people in order to offer them testing, prevention services and treatment if necessary is unpopular in some quarters. When I look at what the Egyptian government is up to, I can really see why.
According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Egypt [...]