The bill pushes that even the most basic benefits package offered by insurance companies should include maternity coverage. It also states that abortions will not be covered by public funding with the exception of cases that involve incest, rape or the mother being at risk of dying due to complications from the pregnancy. This focus on women does not mean that male issues are not being addressed. There are many healthcare activists working around the clock to make sure their issues get addressed. Two examples include Cecile Richards (president of Planned Parenthood) who wants an increase in reproductive health services and Joe Theismann (former quarterback for the Washington redskins) who wants to increase screenings and awareness of abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Richards has been highly successful in lobbying for health reform with over 50,000 letters and e-mails sent to members of Congress and over 150 opinion editorials published in newspapers across the nation. Richards is not displeased about all the news coverage on women’s health issues. Richards states, “What we’re really worried about now is a nursing shortage if health reform passes. We’re having this problem at our family planning clinics in Massachusetts. We can’t seem to keep up with the demand.” Thus, it must have pleased Richards that the recently introduced healthcare bill has sections detailing coverage for nurses. One option discussed was an option to offer coverage for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth for nursing services offered at home. There was also a section detailing coverage for exclusive birth centers which would have staffs comprised of certified nurse-midwives. In addition, another issue high on Planned Parenthood’s list of reproductive services reform is teenage pregnancy which was also highlighted in the new health reform bill.

Theismann, on the other hand, wishes to raise awareness for abdominal aortic aneurysms. These are blood-filled sacs in the abdomen’s main artery that kill up to 9,000 men each year. Theismann was inspired to push for this reform after his father was diagnosed with one of these aneurysms and, fortunately, received treatment for it. If one of these aneurysms ruptures, only 10 to 25 percent of victims will survive it; however, there is a very simple ultrasound screening that can easily detect an aneurysm of this type and potentially save thousands of lives each year. Luckily, the new health reform bill is pushing for Medicare patients to be allowed these screenings.

The data stemming from this recent trial show that this type of vaccine may be better suited for those in the general public, as opposed to those who have an increased risk of contracting the virus, including homosexual men and drug users. This study was the first of its kind in that it was tested mainly amongst heterosexual people with an average risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Colonel Jerome Kim, a United States Army doctor who helped lead the study, states, “This study becomes a landmark. You can put it on a map and begin to figure out where you go from here.” In a recent issued report, researchers attached to this trial informed the public that a combination of two vaccines was reducing the risk of somebody contracting HIV by over 31% according to a Thai study that had over 16,000 voluntary participants.

In an update to these findings, results show that the vaccine is perhaps not as beneficial as previously thought. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a sponsor of the study, feels this may be attributed to the fact that only a few of the participants (125 people) contracted HIV, which is 10 times less than other HIV vaccine trials. To the critics of this study, Dr. Alan Bernstein, the executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, states, “The bottom line is that those results are real. We, for the first time, have evidence of protection, and the nitty gritty (arguments) to me don’t matter a damn.” He has the support of many other researchers, including Dr. Lawrence Corey from the University of Washington, who states, “It’s a consistent story. There seems to be some effect. And I think it is an important study. It redirects the field to look at a different kind of vaccine and different kinds of immune responses.”

The combination vaccine trial was conducted by the Thailand Ministry of Public Health and had over 16,000 participants, both male and female, between the ages of 18 to 30. All of the participants tested HIV-negative and had an average risk of contracting the virus. Half of the participants received the combination vaccine and the other half received dummy shots. Results showed a 31% lower risk of contracting HIV in the group that had received the vaccine. Discussing the results of the study, Dr. Raphael Dolin from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, states, “Perhaps the requirements for protection against transmission in low-risk heterosexual persons are considerably different or less stringent.”

Of those who were brave enough to participate in this study, twenty percent of them admitted to consistently making excuses in order to not have sex. We’ve all heard the old standup routine where the disgruntled and sexually frustrated husband asks “What’s the best way to never have sex again? Get married.” There is a hint, if not a huge fraction, of truth in that. As couples migrate from the courting stage to the long-term relationship to marriage and kids, it seems more often than not that sex gets tossed to the back burner. The OnePoll.com survey had approximately 4,000 British participants and in a surprising twist, males were actually more likely to throw out an excuse to not have sex than women.

The number one excuse for turning down sex for both males and females was the old standby of “I’m too tired.” There were several other excuses that ranked high on the list including, “I’m angry with you,” “I’ve got to get up early in the morning,” “I’m preoccupied with work,” “I’m not in the mood,” “I can hear one of the children” and, my vote for the weirdest high ranked excuse, “You need a shower.” Fifty percent of men suggested that being too tired was their main reason for postponing sex while 75% of women just did not feel in the mood for it.

I can imagine we’ve all been on both sides of the coin in some of these scenarios and can understand that a whole range of emotions gets tapped in situation like this. Guilt for not wanting to have sex when your partner does or disappointment when you’re in the mood and your partner simply turns their back to you and falls asleep. However, bear in mind that there are plenty of reasons when an excuse not to have sex is completely warranted. Some valid excuses include not having a condom and/or forgetting to take a birth control pill, drinking too much and not having your senses intact, having a sexually transmitted disease that you do not want to transmit/contract to/from your potential partner or not really liking/loving the person you are potentially going to have sex with.

You may be wondering what the connection is between safe sex and murderous dictators. Well, the campaign’s tagline of “AIDS is a mass murderer” might put it all into perspective for you. Regenbogen e V. designed this awareness campaign with help from “das Comitee,” an advertising agency. The underlying theme of the campaign is that these three dictators have been responsible for the deaths of approximately the same number of people that have succumbed to AIDS. These pictures of the dictators are, thus, used to show that AIDS is also a killer of the masses in order to frighten people into using condoms correctly and consistently.

Naturally, a campaign of this nature is not without its critics. In fact, there have been several AIDS/HIV charities and foundations that have already come forward to state that they do not support this campaign. One spokeswoman for the National AIDS Trust states, “Of course there are many HIV organizations that run their own campaigns, however, I would think that (advertisement) is incredibly stigmatizing to people living with HIV who already face much stigma and discrimination due to ignorance about the virus. On top of this, it fails to provide any kind of actual prevention message. For example, use a condom, and may deter people to come forward for testing.”

In the last few years, there has been a great reduction in terms of the public’s interest in AIDS and HIV topics. However, the number of people who are succumbing to this disease each and every day has not slowed. In fact, over 28 million people across the globe have succumbed to AIDS, making this virus an unrivaled mass murderer. The campaign was invented and brought forward to ensure that people around the world do not forget that AIDS is still very much a killer that can target anybody. Because of this, the campaign wanted to use shock value (which it did quite well) in order to bring AIDS and HIV issues to the forefront of world news and people’s minds.

Funding for the commercial was provided by the German “das Comitee” on behalf of an AIDS Awareness committee within Germany. Photographs were shot by Uwe Düttmann. The film footage was directed by Ivo Weigert and produced by “Doppelgänger-Film.” All those who participated in creating this commercial campaign volunteered to do so in order to help make it ready for World AIDS Day 2009.

According to the study, Mississippi was number one of the list for being both a) a conservative religious state and b) having a very high teenage pregnancy rate. The study focused merely on data gathered from all the states about religion and pregnancy statistics, thus, there was no scientific evidence gathered that could discuss why this phenomenon occurs. One of the researchers, Joseph Strayhorn, from the Drexel University College of Medicine, stated, “We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”

There are some additional areas of the study that did not get researched. For example, there was no scientific link between teenage pregnancy rates and other more liberal religious practices. In addition, the study simply focused on gathering data about pregnancy and religion from the states but this does not point to whether any specific teenagers, who may or may not be religious, would be more likely to become teenage parents. Amy Adamczyk, a sociologist from the City University of New York who is not affiliated with this research, states, “You can’t talk about individuals, because you don’t know what’s producing the [teen birth] rate. Are there just a couple of really precocious religious teenagers who are running around and getting pregnant and having all of these babies, but that’s not the norm?”

Strayhorn understands Adamczyk’s questions and states, “It is possible that an anti-contraception attitude could be caused by religious cultures and that could exert its effect mainly on the non-religious individuals in the culture. We don’t know.” Data for the religious portion of the study was gleaned from the U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey that took place in 2007 and surveyed close to 36,000 participants. The teenage pregnancy data came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One supporter of the study’s findings includes John Santelli from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia Univeristy. He feels that the results gathered from the study were expected, “The index of religiosity is tapping into more fundamentalist religious belief. I’m sure there are parts of New England that have very low teen birth rates, which have pretty high religious participation, but they’re probably less conservative, less fundamentalist type of congregations.”

The ten states that showed the highest teenage pregnancy rates include Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia. The ten states that are considered to be the most conservative, religion-wise, are Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Others cited the faltering economy as a reason for the Pope to not waste his time visiting, including Kveta Tomasovicova, a worker at the Prague National Library, “It’s just a waste of money. At a time of economic crisis, when our salaries are going down, the visit is a useless investment.” The Vatican is well aware that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit would act more as a missionary trip to a region where religion has been almost entirely deserted. Rev. Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the pope admits that in the modern Czech Republic “the practice of religion is reduced to a minority.” While the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 ended the communist regime through protests, it did not alleviate the strict repression of the church that had become a strong theme of that communist period.

The communist regime took control of then-Czechoslovakia in 1948 and proceeded to take over all property that was owned by the Catholic churches while harshly pursuing the priests. While churches were still allowed to be functioning entities, they could do so only under the strict supervision of the communist state. Despite communism in that region being overthrown over twenty years ago, there are still former church properties that the Catholic Church is still fighting to get control of from the government. This has caused some Czechs to slowly lose their faith as they believe the church is demonstrating that it cares less about retrieving lost souls than it does about retrieving lost real estate. One resident from Brno, Klara Kucerova, states, “”Czechs are getting less religious every year. They are more interested in horoscopes or other kinds of magical predictions.”

Other groups also planned to be vocal about their strong opinions about the current pope. A group naming themselves Condom Positive had plans to hand out condoms at the open-air masses that showed an image of the pope and the inscription, “Papa said no! And you?” Yet another pro-condom group named Condoms for the Pope wanted to walk around with inflated condoms as a way of signaling their anger at the pope who stated this year that condoms would not help the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The group issue a statement that said the pope “clearly shows us that he is more interested in preserving dogma than saving the lives of African women, men and children.”

Years ago, these vaccine trials spurred criticism from many American scientists who felt there would be no effect from continuing this research. The American government was told that the 100 million dollars it put towards these vaccine trials would merely be going down the toilet. Despite this, researchers and health officials in Thailand continued to work with the aid of U.S. researchers from the National Institutes of Health and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research to conduct a trial that would include over 16,000 voluntary participants. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated, “It was a tough decision. I am glad we made it.”

Two prior vaccines that had failed in their own trials were meshed together to create the new trial vaccine. They include ALVAC canary pox/HIV vaccine created by Sanofi-Pasteur and AIDSVAX created by VaxGen. The dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, Donald Burke, noted that because the new trial was using vaccines that had previous failed, it was instantly met with controversy and criticism and, thus, dismissed by several American HIV/AIDS researchers and scientists. He states, “ But given the importance of the AIDS epidemic, the decision was made to go forward regardless of these criticisms. It was a difficult choice, but a courageous choice.”

Burke and fellow researchers used a sample extracted from a young Thai soldier who was infected with HIV in the late 1980s. The trial cost an estimated $105 million and was funded by the U.S. government. In the span of three years and over 16,000 participants, the data showed that the new vaccine reduced the infection rate by over 31%. The Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, Dr. Eric Schoomaker, stated, “To their credit the Thais did a remarkable job on this. They did a remarkable job of recruiting volunteers and conducting this trial almost flawlessly.”

Two decades ago, Thailand was facing sobering statistics. This country of 67 million people with a very prosperous sex industry was facing an epidemic. Researchers predicted that by the year 2000, if nothing was done to change the path Thailand was heading down, over 4 million people would become infected with HIV. The Thai government sprung to action and led a campaign on educating the public about AIDS and AIDS prevention. To combat the rampant unprotected sex taking place in the sex industry, Thai health officials began aggressively promoting the use of condoms. Due to this campaign, the use of condoms in brothels within Bangkok went from 15% in the 90s to 98% in 2000. Punnee Pitisuttithum of the HIV/AIDS research division at Mahidol University in Bangkok states, “We are still strengthening a very strong platform. Before this trial, we had many disappointments but with this result, we see some light at the end of the tunnel.”

Before you men start fainting away, keep in mind that while men CAN get yeast infections, it is a rare occurrence. However, while it may be uncommon, it would be advantageous to educate yourself on the symptoms of a male yeast infection; should you be one of the unlucky few to get one, you can avoid spreading the infection to a sexual partner. One fact to note in terms of spreading the infection is that most doctors do not consider yeast infections a sexually transmitted disease because even women who have never had sex can get them. However, this type of infection can be transmitted through sexual contact, although it is not fairly common.

Regular healthy skin contains a normal amount of yeast on it; it is most prevalent in areas of the body that are moist and warm like the genital area and the mouth. Women are prone to yeast infections when either a different type of yeast comes into contact with the genitals or when there is an imbalance between the amount of yeast and the bacteria that keeps the yeast from increasing (this often happens when a woman is on antibiotics which is why some doctors recommend eating yogurt when taking these drugs). Symptoms of a yeast infection in a woman often involve a burning or itching in the genitals and/or a discharge that is white and thick.

There are many variables that put a man at higher risk of getting a yeast infection. Men who have diabetes, weakened immune systems or have been on antibiotic treatment for an extended time period run a great risk of getting an infection. In addition, not consistently using condoms during sexual activity also raises this risk.

The more common symptoms associated with a male yeast infection include painful urination, swelling or reddish pumps on the penis tip, itchiness or dry skin. While the infection usually stays localized in the penile area, it can also spread to areas surrounding the genitals including the butt, scrotum or thighs. If you are a man and notice any of these symptoms, do not hesitate to make an appointment with your physician. If it is found you have a yeast infection, the treatment usually includes an antifungal ointment or cream that is used for up to a week. It is vital for both men and women to treat their yeast infections so there is a reduced chance of spreading them during a sexual encounter.

Jessica Burris, a researcher in the study, states, “I think people have been well aware of the role that religious and spiritual matters play in everyday life for a very long time. But in the research literature, the unique qualities of spirituality — apart from religiousness — are not usually considered.” Researchers in the study used a measure called the Spiritual Transcendence Scale. The “unique qualities” that Burris refers to include fulfillment of prayers, universality and a feeling of being connected. While the study included questions on all three qualities, the data demonstrated that a feeling of being connected was the most impacting in terms of affecting one’s sexual activity. Having this feeling usually caused one to have sex with multiple partners and to have unprotected sex (not using condoms).

Burris states, “Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself. In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners among university students.” Participants in the study all came from the University of Kentucky. They included over 350 students with over 60% of them being female. Each of the study’s participants were asked to honestly answer questions which included such topics as spirituality, religious background, impulsive actions, alcohol consumption and sexual activities.

The statements in the questionnaires required the participant to rank their agreement level with the statement. For example, one spirituality-based statement read, “In the quiet of my prayers and/or meditations, I find a sense of wholeness.” Another stated, “Although individual people may be difficult, I feel an emotional bond with all of humanity.” Results from the study showed that men who ranked high in terms of spirituality did not seem to have their sexual lives affected in a positive way; in actuality, how often they had sex decreased. Researchers in the study concluded that for men spirituality and sex are not linked since for many men sex does not have to necessarily lead to an emotional attachment.

In the questionnaire, spirituality amongst the women participants, however, did impact in terms how many sexual partners a woman had, how often a woman had sexual relations and whether or not a woman decided to use a condom for protection. Burris states, “It is possible female young adults yearn for greater connectedness with other humans. Spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor.” Some may wonder if spirituality directly affects a woman’s sexuality or if a woman who considers herself spiritual is really just a bit more open-minded and carefree. Burris responds, “Research suggests that spirituality provides predictive utility over and above personality traits such as conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness. So while it may be the case that spirituality is correlated with other variables that show similar relationships with human sexuality and sexual practices (such as openness to experiences), the relationship we observed, in my opinion, cannot simply be explained away by other variables.”

According to a published article in Lancet, a medical journal hailing from Great Britain, there are over 200 million women all over the globe that would like to have contraceptives like condoms made available to them. Because they do not always have access to condoms, there are over 75 million unintended pregnancies each year. Researchers in this study predict that the population growth could easily be slowed down if these women were given proper access to various forms of contraceptives, including birth control pills and condoms. In turn, the decline in the population growth could help by lessening environmental pressures. The article states, “There is now an emerging debate and interest about the links between population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and climate change.”

It is no surprise that in developed countries that have easy access to contraceptives like condoms, the size of families has tended to grow smaller with each passing generation. For example, my maternal grandparents had 15 children. My parents only had two. Only in recent years have health programs funded by the United States actually included educating developing countries on the use of condoms and providing easy access to them, even with the onslaught of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. Experts predict that by the year 2050, the global population will be close to 9 billion. These same experts also predict that over 90% of that population growth will come from the poorer, developing countries.

The article goes on to refer to a report that states it is much more inexpensive for families to plan their children than for technologies to emerge that would help in the fight against climate shifts. In fact, the report states that for every seven dollars a family uses toward family planning, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by over one ton. Researchers in this study point out that the natural growth of the population would not cause a huge increase in climate shifts; however, developing countries and their tendency to overpopulate will likely cause a huge demand for forms of shelter and food. This, in turn, could put a severe strain on the environment.