The Wisdom of Whores

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 things [...]

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 The [...]

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 at [...]