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Kissing on the first date - a No-No but...
Dr. John's Personal Blog	By host on 1/31/2006

At first, I thought what I was hearing was a trend to a more Victorian time. More young females in both high school and college have been telling me they don't kiss on the first date - but will do fellatio on the second date (if they want or not). To many youth, oral sex is not really considered "sex" like vaginal or anal intercourse. That's the dichotomy. Deep kissing, we called it French kissing in the '60s, is safe sex, in most cases. For teens in love or lust, tongue swapping is as natural as Mom's apple pie. It always has been. Today, however, oral sex makes it pie a al mode. Perhaps because of the media's explicit portrayal of sex (or Monica Lewinsky), oral sex is out of the closet. Young people the world over find it less troublesome than what they call "real sex." Most adults are shocked by the nonchalant attitudes of the younger generation towards oral sex. On three visits to American schools last year, I was taken aside by the administrator or teacher who confided in hushed tones that their schools had organized BJ clubs, younger girls doing older boys. No exaggeration, that is what they said. I am no longer shocked by what teens say but am baffled by some adults' shock at teens' attitudes. Don't they read newspapers or watch Oprah or the news? It is up to parents to teach morality in the home and spiritual advisors to preach it in houses of worship. Yet many won't touch the subject of oral sex. Once outside the family environs, youth come in contact with many other influences. Watching TV, listening to rock and rap, going to the movies, surfing the net and talking to friends -- these all turn adolescents on to new and exciting avenues of pleasure that they don't hear about from parents or religious leaders. As a result, many youth report that they consider oral sex to be casual sex because it's quick, easy and uncomplicated -- and you can't get a girl pregnant. They're correct about pregnancy of course, but I remind them that STDs (like herpes, genital warts, gonorrhea, etc.) can be transmitted by oral sex. Yet they think there are medicines at the pharmacy for anything although I point out that not everything can be cured with a drug. I am very clear that there is no medical cure for AIDS and no vaccine to stop HIV although some drug therapies exist to prolong the onslaught of AIDS diseases. (One note: oral sex is not a good transmitter of HIV because of saliva.)

Curing AIDS?
Dr. John's Personal Blog	By host on 1/16/2006

A lot of folks confuse the myriad of drug therapies currently available for people living with AIDS (PLWHAs) with there being a cure. No cure exists after 25 years of research. I am amazed at the number of people who tell me they thought a cure was available - it just wasn't in poor countries like in Africa. There also is no vaccine to stop HIV. If there was, my work wouldn't be needed. Our only tool to stop HIV among teens is honest prevention education and peer counseling. An AP story on Christmas Sunday carried a story that reported: "In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for the HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one." Dr. Edmund Tramont, head of the AIDS research division of the National Institutes of Health was quoted as saying, 'It's not going to be made by a company. They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it.' " The wire story added, "Of course, the pharmaceutical researchers deny that they're dragging their feet." I wonder what are their priorities? The AP story finished with, 'The International AIDS Vaccines Initiative estimates that the annual spent on AIDS vaccine development is $682 million per year, or about half-again as much as was spent to promote Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis in 2004. ' " HmmmŠ in what age population can be found some of the fastest growing incidences of HIV transmission? Besides teens and young adults, it's sexually active seniors who are being greatly affected and infected by these erection enhancers. But if you ask a senior if their peers were at risk for AIDS, they would laugh it off. Okay. They're old enough to know better. Yet teens are innocent and often unsuspecting of this danger around them. I am disturbed when I find a teen who laughs off the threat. That's why I believe so passionately in the TeenAIDS-PeerCorps mission.

By the way
Dr. John's Personal Blog	By host on 1/8/2006

I have looked at quite a few good camera replacements (you probably didn't know I received my M.S. from MIT in film and video eons ago). Is there anyone who would like to donate $900 so I can get a good video camera that will do everything (low light, extreme zoom with stabilizer, excellent sound, easy to hold, etc.)?