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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released data Wednesday revealing that 20 million new sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are diagnosed each year nationwide, costing some $16 billion in taxpayer funds. Half of the 20 million new infections affect people ages 15 to 24 - who only make up a quarter of the population,l according to the statistics. Human papillomavirus (HPV) tops the list as the most common infection followed by chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis B, HIV and trichomoniasis.

Brian and his wife, both in their early forties, like to meet new couples privately over dinner and drinks to talk and gauge mutual interest in trading partners for sex. He’s been swinging for ten years. “I’m very happily married,” he says. So why the interest in this activity? Married swingers aren’t looking for affairs or romantic ties outside their home; they want sex with different partners—and the endorsement of their significant other. Consensual, recreational sex within the confines of matrimony. The allure of swinging isn’t so much sex with someone new but that “vibe in the air which adds...

Pictures, If You Can Stand It. Health officials say they're worried that one day there will be no more antibiotics left to treat gonorrhea. There's some disturbing news out today about a disease we don't hear about much these days: gonorrhea. Federal health officials announced that the sexually transmitted infection is getting dangerously close to being untreatable. As a result, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines for how doctors should treat gonorrhea. The guidelines are designed to keep one of the remaining effective antibiotics useful for as long as possible by restricting the use of...

EXCLUSIVE The Department of Education is giving morning-after pills and other birth-control drugs to students at 13 high schools, The Post has learned. School nurse offices stocked with the contraceptives can dispense “Plan B” emergency contraception and other oral or injectable birth control to girls without telling their parents — unless parents opt out after getting a school informational letter about the new program. CATCH — Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health — is part of a citywide attack against the epidemic of teen pregnancy, which spurs many girls — most of them poor — to drop out of school. Helayne...

Young women in four Bay Area counties can now test themselves at home for sexually transmitted infections, and then get the results and any needed prescriptions without ever visiting a doctor's office or clinic. The home tests are part of a pilot project designed to give women who have had unprotected sex, or are just curious about their health status, a convenient, cost-effective and potentially less embarrassing way to get screened for STDs, public health officials said. The women will be able to test themselves for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis, which are among the most common STDs. Those infections often...

... The new CBA, released Tuesday, added the words “sexual orientation” to its section on discrimination. This development was first reported by the Daily News, and later confirmed by a news release, issued jointly by MLB and the Players’ Association, that read, “Non-discrimination based on sexual orientation were added to Article XV.” Article XV, Section A of MLB’s expiring Basic Agreement, in effect from 2006-2011, states: “The provisions of this Agreement shall be applied to all Players covered by this Agreement without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.” In the new agreement, the words “sexual orientation” were added...

After introducing its first openly gay character in September 2010, Archie Comics continues to lead the pack with the mainstream comic book world’s first same-sex marriage. Kevin Keller will marry his military sweetheart, Clay, in an upcoming issue of Life with Archie. The character is also set to star in a pioneering solo title starting this February. An interracial same-sex marriage between two soldiers in an Archie comic? The times are no longer a-changin’, they are a-changed.

The hospital refused to say why the star was moved but it is believed it was decided that the singer's condition was so acute that it would be better if he was moved to the AKH - the biggest in Europe and where many of the continent's top medical experts are based because of the advanced facilities it offers for research as well as treatment. The hospital has two skyscrapers, identified for navigating around the huge complex as the red tower and the green tower. He is currently in intensive care on the 13th floor of the red tower as...

WASHINGTON, DC, November 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The U.S. Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) most recent data on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases reveals that among homosexual black men the syphilis rates rose a staggering 134% between 2009 and 2010. During the same time frame, syphilis rates among the general population fell by 1.6%. CDC data “show a significant increase in syphilis among young black men who have sex with men (MSM), suggesting that new infections among MSM are driving the increase in young black men,” the CDC report stated. “The finding is particularly concerning as there has also...

Occupy Wall Street protesters are flocking to nearby health clinics for testing for sexually-transmitted diseases, including HIV, after getting their freak on in 1960s-style hookups with crusty strangers, sources said. "Last week was free love," a medical professional at a nearby clinic said, referring to the number of people who organizers referred for STD testing. A volunteer at Zuccotti Park admitted concern among protesters about STDs. "We give directions to clinics if people ask for information regarding STDs," the volunteer, who identified himself only as "Captain," said, adding that pregnancy tests are also a hot item.

Page 19 - In a bathouse in New York City, Demetre Daskalakis, MD hopes to solve the mysteries of long-term resistance to HIV infection. In this unusual setting he established an HIV testing site in 2007.

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

There was a time when having sex with a woman meant a wedding ring, a court ship or at the very least, dinner. But social psychologists say those days are quickly coming to an end as women become more promiscuous, Yahoo Shine reports. -snip- Other things that are said to have contributed to these changes include gender equality, birth control and internet porn.

An interesting recent paper confirms that most gay men with one main partner for a given year also have concurrent casual sexual relationships. The paper presents good data on the number of gay partnerships per year, confirming previous findings by others, but what is new are data about gay relationships per year when there is also a main partner. Contrary to the stereotype, the typical number of sexual partners per year per person in the SSA community is not hundreds but about three. If there was no main partner the figure was five. The result for bisexuals was 2.5 partners....

WASHINGTON, August 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The California legislature is now pushing through a bill to remove parental notification for children as young as 12 to receive the dangerous STD vaccine Gardasil. The American Life League reports that each treatment of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, has an average cost of over $360, a sum that would be footed by taxpayers. Gardasil, the most popular HPV vaccine, has been found to cause dangerous side effects and as many as twelve deaths in the United States alone. The state had attempted but failed in 2007 to mandate HPV vaccinations for all girls...

WASHINGTON – Millions of women stand to gain free access to a broad menu of birth control methods, thanks to a recommendation issued Tuesday by health experts advising the government. An Institute of Medicine panel recommended that the government require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women as preventive care, without copayments. Contraception — along with such care as diabetes tests during pregnancy and screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer — was one of eight recommended preventive services for women. "Unintended pregnancies carry health consequences for the mother — psychological, emotional and physical — and also...

7-14-2011 SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. announced today that he has signed the following bill: • SB 48 by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) – Pupil instruction: prohibition of discriminatory content.

We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships. [snip] What many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in...

Oral sex could be hazardous to your health. So say researchers who note that oral cancer stemming from the human papilloma virus is more common in the U.S. than oral cancer caused by abusing tobacco. Researchers found a 225% increase in oral cancer cases in the U.S. from 1974 to 2007, mainly among white men, said Maura Gillison, a cancer researcher at Ohio State University. The more oral-sex partners a man had, the greater his cancer risk, Gillison told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of oral cancer in...

Offering the morning after pill free over the counter has not reduced the number of teenage pregnancies and may be associated with a rise in sexually-transmitted diseases (STIs), according to a report by experts at The University of Nottingham. Professors David Paton and Sourafel Girma used local health authority data to study the impact that the introduction of Government-backed schemes to offer emergency birth control at pharmacies and without prescription have had on conception rates and the diagnosis of STIs among under-18s. Their findings show that, on average, areas operating a pharmacy emergency birth control (EBC) scheme saw an overall...