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Under our “Quick Navigation” banner below, we have set up a new “World AIDS Day” section. We want to encourage you to participate in these activities that will be Webcast live around the globe on Friday, Dec. 1st and Saturday, Dec. 2nd:
1. Youth awareness events in 50 countries and across the U.S.
2. Major PeerCorps training sessions for you and your friends.
Join our effort and we will add your name and the photos of the events you are planning for all the world to see. Click here for Volunteer Form
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Dr. John's Personal Blog
Author: host Created: 11/29/2005
Dr. John urges youth to take responsibility by talking honestly to their peers. He challenges governments and adult society to educate their youth because: "It's the human right of every maturing adolescent to have complete access to the medical facts.
Kissing on the first date - a No-No but...
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?
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
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.)?
Update on Injury
By host on 1/8/2006
I've recovered from my injury in the robbery in Panama City. I want to thank the police in Panama City (detectives, local and National Tourism) for their assistance. They drove me to and from headquarters, to the hospital, to the ATM, until I asked if they didn't have more important things to do - like murders or really serious crime than my $600 video camera? I wasn't being facetious. I was concerned that they were spending too much time on a minor robbery because I was who I was (a tourist).
Censorship
By host on 1/7/2006
I just received an email from our Global Advisory Board member Dr. Brian Michael Jones of Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. Brian is head of the Division of Immunology in the Pathology Department working with pediatric AIDS. Here is what he wrote: "I'll look forward to checking the revamped website. Actually I've just attempted to go there and would you believe our firewall (Hospital Authority) has blocked entrance because of "sex education content"?!!! That's what we're up against!!!" Censorship of medically accurate facts is on the rise in American schools and overseas in communist China. Our mission statement is clear: we believe it is the human right of every maturing teen to have complete access to medically accurate information. No government or adult society has the right to deny young people the necessary information to save their lives. Censorship of high-risk behaviors is neither cool nor wise. Adults who censor the facts and obfuscate the prevention education are actually helping to increase the incidence of HIV and death by AIDS among adolescents. They must be held accountable. In the meantime, inquisitive youth can come to our website from everywhere, every day, 24 hours a day - and in 23 major languages. Yes, our message can be stopped momentarily, but we have internet friends who know how to get the word to those in real need. Won't you help? Make a tax-deductible donation to TeenAIDS.
"My Super Sweet 16" TV show on MTV
By host on 1/3/2006
Just when I thought that being totally self-centered and obnoxious was the purview of Hollywood publicity hounds, along comes a reality TV show from MTV, "My Super Sweet 16." If you haven't seen it yet (and only if the glow of the holiday season's feelings of charity and peace have worn off), catch this show. I find it appalling - but mesmerizing all the same.
Girls approaching their 16th birthdays are rewarded with lavish bashes by indulgent parents. By lavish, I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars for a party, not a mere $1,000 spent on graduation parties. Without blinking an eye, their adult guardians try to buy their way into their daughters' favors with Great Gatsby events. By all accounts on the show, they succeed. In every new episode, the girl whines that her Daddy or Mommy must do this for them or else (what will happen, I wonder?!) and the parent exclaims they would do it again (and again ad infinitum).

It's not a pretty sight. Oh, the girls can be sweet and very pretty. But, their attitudes suck bigtime. Folks, I want teens to have fun but this show is bizarre, sad, entertaining -- and a real money maker for MTV's ratings! What a brilliant reality TV concept as wealthy families compete to outperform past parties. However, where is any sense of proportion or charity? Wouldn't it be a grand gesture if these girls and their parents donated 10% of the outlay to an educational or charitable cause benefiting teens?

I want to point out that MTV does do HIV/AIDS public service ads and special programming to raise awareness about HIV prevention.

At Xmas Eve services on Saturday, a mother came up to me and said she was proud she had brought up her only son to want to volunteer at least some of his time to charitable causes. I know her son and he's a serious minded business major with an altruistic spirit. Contrasted with the young teens on "Super Sweet, etc.", our PeerCorps teens around the world (from wealthy, modest and poor backgrounds) show their true mettle through their volunteer actions as part of every individual's responsibility to their fellow humans.
Donate Please
By host on 12/31/2005
That's right, we need money like every not-for-profit charitable organization doing good work. We are pleased to announce a $25,000 matching gift offer from two longtime supporters of TeenAIDS - as long as we can raise a similar amount from friends like you by my birthday, February 27. Please read this letter of appeal and consider giving TeenAIDS a generous tax-deductible donation. Please keep in mind that every donation of any size helps us to reach the goal. Could you help by passing our appeal on to friends in a position to give? Help Us
We're Undergoing Construction
By host on 12/28/2005
Every few days, another addition or section will be posted on our evolving website. You might have noticed our new look. Kyle Laughlin, who designed our previous site in 2001, has been instrumental in getting our revamped site online with the help of Kevin Pelletier, who is assuming more website responsibility in 2006. However, it is taking time. We have a lot of information to link and download while we raise funds to pay for the updates. Please be patient as we gear up for an official February 15th launch date. Our goal is to have the most extensive resource online for teens and young adults so that they have the uncensored, medically accurate information they need to avoid HIV and AIDS.
Follow-up on Injury and Robbery in Panama
By host on 12/28/2005
You can read the official police report about the robbery at a soccer game in a barrio of Panama City on December 11, 2005. I have recovered almost full use of my right side that was injured when I was struck by the robber's car in his get-away. I still need help typing and Johanne Cimon is assisting me. I received a wonderful email from a young man, Raphael Ernest Ballesteros,from Chorrillo who was there that day and expressed his disappointment that it happened in his neighborhood.
Costa Rica
By host on 12/15/2005
Costa Rica is truly a wonderful country with a very special personality all of its own in Central America. With a large group of volunteer youth, I canvassed the neighborhoods, schools, malls, and spoke to students at the University of Costa Rica in San Pedro and at the Pan American University in San Jose. When I asked Giovanni- a 20 year old- volunteer, what he liked most about his country, he looked at me and smiled and said, "We have no army." It struck me that that was what he was proud of. His second answer was, we love and respect our rain forest. I thought both answers were very unique and I hoped said a lot about the young people of Costa Rica.

At night a slew of university students guided me though the streets and parks of the capitol city, San Jose. I talked with many prostitutes, transvestites("Travesties") and drug dealers. In every case, these young people who are most at risk for HIV wanted to hear all the information about the sexual and needle transfers of HIV. Today, Monday December 12th, I am visiting two universities, where end of the year examinations are taking place. I will be doing walks to speak to groups of young people.
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