The Wisdom of Whores

The test-and-treat debate has been getting a bit hot and heavy of late. I think we all deserve some light relief. I offer this:

Thanks to Txema, who is always ready to make a girl smile.

Yesterday, I sat at the TED conference in California and watched David Cameron pledge to make policies that support prostitutes.
He didn’t say it in those words, exactly, but he did promise firmly to make policy that “goes with the grain of human nature”. That would be a massive change for the UK: Labour’s old fashioned [...]

Epidemiologists don’t often hit the headlines. While forensic scientists are celebrated in endless mini-series, the bug hunters merit just the occasional, mercifully long forgotten film (anyone remember Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak? I thought not). As a job, it’s just not very sexy, and most of us who plod away at it keep our wild sides [...]

The US voted for hope. It (we, I) voted for change. It (we, I) got a president who suggested sensible things like basing health policy on good science. The US even got some senators who followed through with funding for programmes that would teach young people that if you want to have sex and not [...]

Many Europeans think American beer is gnat’s piss. But the maker of the pissiest “Lite” version is turning our mind to another orifice. Anal sex, or the slang for it at any rate, appears to going mainstream in the US. Buy your lube stocks now.

Thanks to IRMA, the bottom line in HIV prevention, for [...]

Further to yesterday’s post, stats-are-fun superstar Hans Rosling has calculated a coverage-per-death ratio for swine flu and TB. It clearly points to an under-reporting of the boring old pandemics that we’ve grown used to ignoring. But it also begs the question that plagues prevention efforts in health as well as in other areas — terrorism, [...]

In belated recognition of May Day, I give you these sensible words from sex workers in India, courtesy of my once-long-ago employers, Reuters. Funnily enough, one of the very first stories I ever wrote for Reuters was about sex workers in a time of economic meltdown. It was also the first to draw a response [...]

Look, Muffy, a new drug just for me!
With thanks to Prof K, who I’m sure didn’t mean it personally…

There’s enough divorce in the world without forcing it on people who want to be together…

“Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
On the subject of America’s extaordinary relationship with homosexuality, I urge you to see Milk, an important film about an important era, which reminds us rather vividly that we have not come far, [...]

Thanks to David