I assume that Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, who died on Saturday, believed in an afterlife. I wonder if he’s given any thought to the millions of people he’ll meet in that afterlife who died young of AIDS because they didn’t use condoms. Some didn’t use condoms because they don’t like them, perhaps. Some because condoms [...]
It’s five years since the first London school opened an on-site clinic that dishes out contraceptive advice and condoms to schoolkids. And it seems to be working. Not a baby at the school ever since, compared with nine pregnancies in a year shortly before the programme began. Writing in the Guardian, Fran Abrams points out [...]
I’m not easily shocked. Really. But I have to say that the hairs rose on the back on my neck when I saw this: A catholic NGO, calling itself Human Life International, has put up three of these billboards in Tanzania. It’s president, Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, crows about this achievement on a Catholic web [...]
Easter and the spring equinox. In the Christian parts of the northern hemisphere this time of year is all about sex and death. Here’s some advice on how to enjoy the one without courting the other. I’m heading for the hills for a couple of days, and will be resurrected next week. To those who [...]
Also from Scientific American, news of self-healing rubber. If there were a way we could build in an early warning system for the tears, it could open up whole new horizons for safe sex, no? Though I’m not sure whether we’d really want to recycle it….
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 [...]
Valentine’s day special from Monica Sweeney, NYC Health Department’s assistant commissioner for HIV prevention and control. “We’re trying to make New York City an even safer place to have sex”. Let’s see if the redesigned condoms will make for more safe sex: last year the city gave out 36 million condoms, according to the New [...]
A comment I made online in a debate about condoms in the British Medical Journal appears in the print edition this week. Readers’ poll: who agrees with me?
As citizens of a country founded on the slogan “No taxation without representation”, Americans living overseas get to pay taxes without any dedicated representation in Congress. But they do get to vote in primaries. The Democrats make it easier than the Republicans , even providing helpful on-the-spot voting sites in pubs in Dublin and donut [...]
Poor women in Manila are petitioning the courts so that they can get their hands on contraception, according to a Reuters report. Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza issued an executive order discouraging modern contraception in 2000, and the casualties have been piling up ever since, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights — more deaths [...]
Celeb economist Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, has been drawing attention to the fact that women can earn more selling sex than in lots of other jobs — around four times more, at least in Chicago. In the UK, between two and three times more, if you add up hours worked over a week. Two [...]
Democrats in Indonesia have organised to produce what every presidential candidate needs: handy condoms in packaging hardy enough to withstand the ardours of the campaign trail. Studded condoms, to boot, supplied by the ever-popular Fiesta brand. Studs and parties, then. Not entirely inappropriate.
It’s finally official. Get sloppy drunk, and you could end up with a drippy dick. This according to a study of 520 STD clinic patients published in the International Journal of STDs & AIDS (abstract available online. The full text of this publicly funded study costs an outrageous US$18). The journal’s editor, Wallace Dinsmore, told [...]
Lee Rudolph suggested storm drains as a source of condoms that can be turned into hairbands. But Jakarta’s storm drains function are the city’s official waste collection system; filtering the condoms out of the assembled detritus would be daunting even to the city’s thousands of diligent garbage pickers. So Indonesia is importing used condoms from [...]
Sales of the England football supporters condoms linked to in the previous post may have drooped along with the team’s performance, but there’s no shortage of other specialist condoms to keep the spirits up. Earlier this year, a virbrating condom sent waves through the Indian market. The Crezendo condom vibrates through a battery operated ring [...]
Some economists, comparing the cost of manufacturing and distributing condoms with the cost of treating HIV, believe that condoms should be bought by governments and distributed free to anyone who needs them. So how come they are so expensive in many countries? In Britain, bog standard condoms cost over one Euro each, more if you [...]
An all-time favourite, this French ad reminds us that there are all sorts of good reasons to use condoms.