So I was at Starbucks last week waiting for my mum to pick me and her coffee up. I was getting a bit bored so I picked up this week's copy of "Dallas Voice" and began to flip through where I saw an article intitled; "Giving Up on Gay Men". It was about a profraltic treatment for AIDS. It decreased the rate of infection of AIDS by 44%. It which is a huge step forward for science but, it is not enough. Also this drug has some pretty intense side effects such as nausea and Kidney damage in almost 100% of the time. This supposed miracle drug costs $12,000 a year and doctors are nervous about prescribing it. Bottom line great first step but we as a society need so much more.

 

I know this sounds bad but up until last week I didn't realize Dan Savage was a sex columnist. I knew him from the it gets better project and his numerous stories on this american life but I didn't know him for his true claim to fame Savage Love. i was supposed to hear him speak at the Kesseler Theater last week but, long story short I wasn't able to go. I was however exposed to his podcast "the savage love cast". Which I would like to say gave a whole new spin about sex ed for me. Dan talks in away that says sex should be enjoyable and the best kind of sex is safe. I am not sure it was nice to finally hear someone on the radio telling it straight about sex. If you want to check out his columns go to www.thestranger.com/seattle/Author (i recomemnd it). 

Below is a clip from his video for "It Get's Better":

My youngest sister Frankie is the coolest thirteen year old I have ever met and I am not just saying this because we are related. She constantly is standing up for the unvoiced. Her teacher a couple months ago was saying hateful about illegal immagrants as the rest of her classmates kept silent Frankie explained to her teacher that everyone had a right to happiness. How they were working harder then anyone to get the bare minimum. But, the story I really want to focus on is when she stood up for gay rights. I was going to right about it but why don't I have her tell you the story on the video below.  www.youtube.com/watch 

Alex Pucciarelli is a senior at Booker T. Washington High School For the Preforming and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas. Alex is now a member of the Texas Youth Leadership Council – a project of Advocates for Youth and the Texas Freedom Network.

As someone with many allergies I have developed empathy for people with severe allergies. I frequently ponder the changes that other people have to make to their lives to combat their allergies. Most recently I have been thinking a lot about latex allergies and more specifically safe sex with latex allergies. I know that the majority of condom are made with latex but I knew that there must be other options too so, I did some research and I came upon sexuality.about.com. They were an amazing source for information on a topic that most people don't know a lot about. This lack of knowledge about latex allergies is most likely because only .8% of the population will show any kind of allergic reaction and for most people this reaction isn't severe enough to make any real change to their lives. If you are in the group that have type I allergies ( if people in this group have any contact with latex they will go into anaphylactic shock) there are four types of options for barrier protection for you.

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I was going through the headlines of MSNBC.com today and I was shocked to see that more teens are using the rhythm method. The rhythm method fails 25 percent of the time. Which is probably why the teen pregnancy rate isn't going down.  MSNBC thinks that the other reason for this change is the change in the attitudes of young people.  "Teen attitudes may be big part of it. Nearly 64 percent of teen boys said it's OK for an unmarried female to have a child, up from 50 percent in 2002. More than 70 percent of teen girls agreed, up from 65 percent, though the female increase was not statistically significant." There is a big difference from thinking it is okay to be unmarried and pregnant then thinking that teen pregnancy is okay. So that reasoning is completely unreasonable to me.  

 This post is about a letter sent to the "Ethicist", Randy Cohen for the New York times. The letter is from an orthodox Jewish woman who was set up with a transgender man. After finding out that he was formerly a woman she broke up with him. She wanted to know if she should out him to the rabbi and the rest of the Jewish community. My gut reaction is never and I feel that most reasonable people would agree. This information is his to share and no one else has the right to share it. The only difference in the ethicist's and my opinion was her right to tell her friends.The ethicist believes she has the right to tell people and I do not agree. I mean I guess it is her story too. But I believe in this situation gossip spreads like wildfire. So this could ruin his life. The link to this article is at the bottom of the page.

 

FDA approves Merck's Gardasil for boys Drug is already approved to prevent cervical cancer in wome WASHINGTON - Drugmaker Merck said Friday that U.S. regulators cleared its vaccine Gardasil to prevent genital warts in boys, a new use for a product already approved to prevent cervical cancer in women. The Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based company said the Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil for use in boys ages 9 through 26. Gardasil already is approved in women to block four strains of the human papilloma virus that cause the majority of cervical cancers and genital warts. Merck has sold about 50 million doses worldwide, with more than $1.4 billion in revenue last year. While the approval could theoretically double the market for Merck's vaccine, analysts do not expect Gardasil to be widely used in boys. Genital warts caused by HPV usually clear up by themselves, and the cancers caused by the virus are extremely rare in men. Read more at www.msnbc.msn.com Okay so the article above is pretty old but the information contained in it is still important. I wrote this piece when I was blogging on the other amplify. Now that the FDA approved Gardasil for men. I think this is a huge step forward for society because even though men can't get HPV they can pass it to their partners. So, it's important for men as well as women to get the vaccine. So, that we can all remain sexually healthy. The sad thing is that most men won't get the vaccine because they believe it is a "women's" issue. Instead of what it really is, a public health issue.

 I was on cnn.com today getting my daily news fix. When I noticed an article about the ninth baby in California dying from whooping cough. In California there are more cases today of whooping cough than there were in 1955. The rise in whooping cough is due to people choosing not vaccinate their children.These people are usually okay because everyone else is getting vaccinated and also this kind of decision may seem to some people as a choice that purely effects themselves.  But in fact when you choose to not vaccinate your children you are effecting public health by ruining attenuated immunity. If 90% of people have a vaccine it is impossible to catch infection/ disease this protects infants who are too young for the vaccine and  people who's immune systems are too weak to receive the vaccine. When the percent of vaccinated people goes under 90% diseases that haven't been seen in a long time begin to start to reappear again and start to effect public health. Like this outbreak of whooping cough in California. The babies that died of whooping cough were all too young to receive the vaccine and because people selfishly choose to not get vaccinated over 4000 people have been effected.

I am frequent reader of the New York Times magazine, in my opinion it is the best part of Sunday. I read the magazine cover to cover but my favorite part is the ethicist. Randy Cohen a humorist/ ethicist is sent in ethical questions by his readers. Last week's first letter intrigued me. My thoughts have been drawn to it all week. The sender of the letter said he was at a doctors appointment and as the technician was wiring him to an EKG machine she talked about how the heart fascinates her and that there was no way man evolved from ape. The patient felt vulnerable and wondered if he should mention this to the doctor. I feel that everyone has a right to free speech but in this case the tech was spouting beliefs in such a way that she made an already uncomfortable person feel more vulnerable.  She may have found it appropriate it to spout her love for creationism and might of been unaware that it made the patients uncomfortable so, the patient should have mentioned it to her at the time. Since that opportunity passed it is now appropriate to report this incident to the office so, this kind of behavior doesn't continue in the future. In the update we find out that he did just that and the office took it seriously but we do not know the real outcome.