We just got a curious e-mail from Tod Hunter, an adult industry reporter and blogger, saying there have been “reports of Legionnaires’ Disease” at the Luxor in Las Vegas and that people attending AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo may have been exposed. Hunter warns:

The incubation period for the disease is between 10 days and two weeks, so anyone exposed during AVN Adult Entertainment Expo would be feeling the effects now. And maybe thinking they’re getting the traditional post-show January cold.

According to the Mayo Clinic, Legionnaires’ symptoms include headache, muscle pain, chills, and fevers that run 104F or higher. By the second or third day, symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue, loss of appetite, confusion or spaciness, and gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea.

A milder form of this disease is Pontiac fever, which usually doesn’t develop beyond primary symptoms and which clears within two to five days. Most healthy people can recover from the disease with antibiotic treatment, but death can occur in five to 30 percent of cases, if symptoms progress and the disease is left untreated, warns the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There has already been one death associated with this recent outbreak at the Luxor. The Las Vegas Review-Journal writes:

Bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease were found in water samples taken earlier this month at the Luxor after a former guest died of the form of pneumonia, officials with the Southern Nevada Health District said Monday.

[ ... ] Testing of the water done after the CDC reported the death to the health district on Jan. 6 found conclusively that the Legionella bacteria were present in the water system, a preliminary investigative report issued by the health district revealed. The incubation period for the disease is between 10 days and two weeks, [senior epidemiologist with the health district, Brian] Labus said.

Early last year, there was a Legionnaires’ outbreak among guests who had attended an event at the Playboy Mansion to benefit Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vax Generation Rescue Autism Foundation. According to the Los Angeles Times, at least 170 fell ill after being exposed to a whirlpool spa on the Holmby Hills mansion grounds.

Photo from AVNs used in the header collage by Michael Dorausch.

The International AIDS Conference — a gathering of all those involved in working for the eradication and treatment of HIV, as well as policymakers and activists — is returning to the United States after 22 years this July to assess the scientific progress that has been made and lobby for improvements in policy regarding the populations most affected by HIV and AIDS.

According to their site:

The AIDS 2012 programme will present new scientific knowledge and offer many opportunities for structured dialogue on the major issues facing the global response to HIV. A variety of session types — from abstract-driven presentations to symposia, bridging and plenary sessions — will meet the needs of various participants. Other related activities, including the Global Village, satellite meetings, exhibitions and affiliated independent events, will contribute to an exceptional opportunity for professional development and networking.

Audacia Ray, founder of the Red Umbrella Project, has issued a call to sex worker activists to join forces, noting among various pressing issues that “the U.S. exports terrible policies and strings-attached funding that harms sex workers. For example the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which funds international organizations, include an anti-prostitution clause in contracts with grantees. American sex workers must stand up to our government and denounce PEPFAR and similar policies that harm our brothers and sisters around the world. The IAC is an important forum for us to make our voices heard.”

From PEPFAR Watch:

Current law requires all organizations that receive PEPFAR funding to have a policy that explicitly opposes prostitution and sex trafficking. This policy, known as the anti-prostitution pledge, or the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath (APLO), has been shown to have a negative impact on prevention efforts because it undermines the most effective approaches to working with sex workers.

Sex workers are among the most marginalized people in any society and often lack access to social and health support systems — while being at increased risk of HIV infection. Their rights to access health care and to be free from violence are frequently violated, making it essential that organizations work with them non-judgmentally. Organizations that build trust with and peer relationships among sex workers have yielded dramatic reductions in HIV infections among these populations. But CHANGE [Editor's note: The Center for Health and Gender Equity] has found that these organizations are unlikely to sign the pledge, making them ineligible for funding. Other groups have been cut off from funds because of over-interpretation of the policy by U.S. officials in the field, made possible because the government has not clearly defined what constitutes a violation of the policy. Moreover, the pledge has led organizations to eliminate, scale back, or censor their prevention efforts with sex workers, undermining best practices in public health.

As a result, the pledge has led to further alienation of already-stigmatized groups, given free rein to police who abuse or extort money from sex workers, and has resulted in further violence, discrimination and human rights violations against women, men and transgender people in prostitution. The policy is driving sex workers underground and away from the non-governmental organizations and health workers best poised to provide them with HIV prevention, health and alternate-livelihood services.

If you can’t join the Red Umbrella Project but feel strongly about these issues, you can still take action by writing a message to the Committee on Foreign Affairs urging for comprehensive, evidence-based HIV prevention in foreign assistance reform efforts that doesn’t marginalize at-risk populations such as sex workers.

Image of Red Umbrella activists by ReikHavoc, via TitsandSass.

Here at Sex and the 405, we have heard many rumors about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) since we started reporting on their war on pornography, chief among them that they opposed research into an AIDS/HIV vaccine. Not content to become part of the gossip mill, we decided to dive into the allegations.

When our editrix asked Lori Yeghiayan, associate director of communications at AHF, whether its president Michael Weinstein does not support further development of an HIV vaccine, she responded: “no, that’s not accurate. There was a time — this was probably about five years ago that we had put out an argument about not spending exorbitant amounts of money on clinical trials for a vaccine when it was not really producing results. Not really basic research but actually clinical trials in several countries with thousands of people and that there had been several failures with the vaccine search in that way so we had made an argument about putting money into proven efforts, which is treatment. We are for basic research into HIV and HIV vaccines and new drugs and all that. It’s not accurate to say we’re against it.”

Okay. That makes perfect sense. But just to be sure we had all the information we hit up Google. What we found, from AHF itself, was disheartening.

On May 5, 2008, the 11th Annual Conference on Vaccine Research was scheduled to convene in Baltimore, Maryland. A little over a month before the conference, an editorial (which has since been yanked) appeared on Baltimore Sun in which AHF President Michael Weinstein and AHF Chief of Medicine Dr. Homayoon Khanlou wrote about the futility of continuing to fund vaccine research. The editorial, which remains on RedOrbit.com reads:

To control AIDS, funding must be invested in strategies that work: effective prevention efforts, routine testing and universal access to treatment — and not spent on expensive vaccine research that over 20 years has yielded little of promise other than discovering how not to make an AIDS vaccine.

The latest round of vaccine trial failures (including a large-scale Merck trial halted when the vaccine turned out to have possibly increased subjects’ risk of acquiring HIV) has added to a growing consensus in the scientific community that an AIDS vaccine is a decade or more away, if one can be developed at all.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), recently stated: “We have to leave open the possibility … that we might never get a vaccine for HIV.” That view was shared by leading AIDS expert David Baltimore, who conceded last month that the scientific community is no closer now to discovering an HIV vaccine than it was 20 years ago.

Twenty years of research and the fact remains: a vaccine against a retrovirus, the family of viruses HIV belongs to, has never been successfully developed. It is highly unlikely that there will be an AIDS vaccine — certainly not by any current standard definition of the word.

Having met the public’s criticism of his position, Weinstein elaborated on his position in an editorial for the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks later:

There are not just two or three AIDS vaccine candidates that have failed. Every AIDS vaccine candidate to date has failed. Leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Dr. David Baltimore, have even gone so far as noting that we are no closer to the discovery of an AIDS vaccine today than we were 20 years ago.

In fact, not only have all the AIDS vaccine candidates failed, the latest was hurriedly pulled from clinical trial after the vaccine was found to actually put people at a significantly increased risk of contracting HIV. Twenty-seven years into the AIDS pandemic, countless billions in taxpayer (and private) vaccine funding later, and our leading researchers can’t even meet the most fundamental tenet to “do no harm.”

[...] Currently, the AIDS vaccine establishment continues its taxpayer-funded, repeatedly unsuccessful search for a preventive AIDS vaccine while an alternative many have seen work on multiple levels — successful antiretroviral treatment as both treatment and prevention — goes unchampioned.

This is why the AIDS Healthcare Foundation believes that it is time to pull the plug on U.S. taxpayer financing of the search for a vaccine, and leave it to private donors to back what has been and continues to appear to be a fruitless goal. To continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a government-funded search for an AIDS vaccine in the vain hope of success someday while millions worldwide suffer and die is simply unacceptable when other currently available strategies offer practical — and effective — alternatives.

Dr. David Baltimore, incensed by the name-dropping that linked him to Weinstein’s indictment of the “vaccine establishment” responded in an editorial co-written with Dr. Seth Berkley, a medical epidemiologist and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI):

This very pessimistic view of the possibility of success in the vaccine quest is a misreading of the situation.

Yes, the Merck trial of an experimental vaccine failed to show efficacy. But it was not a failure as a trial. It had a hugely important outcome: We now know one preparation that will not work as a vaccine. Before this trial we knew only one other direction that had failed, so our knowledge has doubled.

Knowing what not to do is useful because it informs further research. Of course, we would rather have successful trials that tell us we are going in the right direction, but AIDS vaccine development is hard, and negative trials are not a surprise. Because the trial was so professionally accomplished, we can trust its results.

Now what we need are more such trials of materials different enough from the Merck materials that we can learn something from them. The job of the research community is to make the judgment of what materials fit this criterion. But to give up at this point would be criminal. Luckily, the cool heads in the AIDS research community are not giving up — they are searching for new directions. There is a healthy debate about what those directions should be. But to our minds, we need more human clinical research, not less, if we are to find the magic formula that will protect people against AIDS.

Not to be outdone by the Nobel Prize winner, Weinstein returned to the Los Angeles Times opinion page condemning efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine as “self-serving.” He writes:

The search for an AIDS vaccine has lost its scientific purpose and turned into a self-serving quest.

How else to explain the remarks found in David Baltimore and Seth Berkley’s “Keep funding the AIDS vaccine”? Saying simply that “AIDS vaccine development is hard” is not a credible response to recent criticism leveled at the ballooning U.S. budget for AIDS vaccine research and the meager results it has produced. The argument is particularly weak when you consider that nearly $1 billion in public funding is poured annually into this fruitless quest, while millions globally lack access to the revolutionary, life-saving AIDS treatment that was developed more than 12 years ago: antiretroviral medication.

We understand the desire to make treatment available to those affected by HIV and AIDS worldwide, but to actively campaign to kill all public funding for an HIV vaccine is unconscionable. And speaking of self-serving, here’s a question we leave with you: does AHF provide the above-mentioned unchampioned treatments for HIV and AIDS?

The answer, from the AHF website: “Our healthcare centers offer thousands of clients — many of them uninsured — the finest HIV-centered primary care, and our pharmacies specialize in HIV medications. Our researchers conduct trials of the newest drugs and treatment protocols to improve patient quality of life. Through Positive Healthcare, our managed care program in California and Florida, we provide HIV positive Medicaid recipients extra tools to manage their disease.”

Image of test tubes by Horia Varlan.

Any one of us could probably name at least one male sex aid, but what do we know about female sex aids? Not a whole lot. It doesn’t mean there are no female sex aids out there or in development.

In 2004, Procter & Gamble introduced Intrinsa, a testosterone patch that would have been used to give female libido a boost; unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration rejected it because they were unsure of long-term effects of testosterone on women.

Flibanerin was rejected by the FDA over the summer because the side-effects out-weighed the benefits. BioSante Pharmaceuticals has a testosterone gel in development called LibiGel that they will be submitting to the FDA next year, but nothing is certain.

And then there’s Zestra, a combination of botanical oils and extracts said to increase sensitivity when applied to the genital region.

Getting past the FDA can be something of a major hurdle for these products, but Semprae Laboratories got Zestra around it by developing the sex aid as a cosmetic, which, under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, can be manufactured and marketed without government approval.

Brilliant. Except for one thing. Few networks want to advertise the product. Per the SFGate, which first reported on the story:

In an apparent double standard, many networks and some websites have declined the company’s ads; a few will air them during the daytime, and others only after midnight. There is no nudity, sex, or mention of body parts, unlike ads for men’s products referring to “erections lasting more than four hours.”

“The most frequent answer we get is, ‘We don’t advertise your category,’ ” [co-founder Rachel Braun] Scherl said. “To which we say, ‘What is the category? Because if it’s sexual enjoyment, you clearly cover that category. If it’s female enjoyment, you clearly don’t.’ And when you ask for information as to what we would need to change so they would clear the ad for broadcast, they give you very little direction. … And yet they have no problem showing ads for Viagra and other men’s drugs. Why?”

Is the cosmetic loophole creating a problem for Zestra? Or is it that we, as SFGate seems to suggest, are uncomfortable with the idea of female sexuality?

“When you see naked women bounding around in any music video or open a magazine and see ads for cars or cosmetics, half-naked women are everywhere,” says Laura Grindstaff, an associate professor of sociology at UC Davis. “That is not women’s sexuality. What you see is completely bound up and constructed by male ideas of what women’s sexuality ought to be. An ad like Zestra’s, with no men in it, about women’s pleasure for the sake of pleasure, is threatening, I guess.”

Rita Melendez, an associate professor of sexuality studies at San Francisco State University adds: “If they really can’t run these ads, it’s telling women they are not — or should not be — in control of their desire, or that there is something shameful about their sexual desire, and that has huge implications for their ability to control pregnancy, partner abuse and sexual health.”

Currently more than 80 percent of HIV-positive individuals in the country receive antiretrovirals and pregnant women are offered treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission; nevertheless, those with HIV continue to suffer mistreatment and discrimination, including forced sterilization.

The abuse is detailed in Dignity Denied: Violations of the Rights of HIV-Positive Women in Chilean Health Facilities, which was published last month by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and Vivo Positivo, a Chilean non-governmental organization (NGO).

According to The Global Post, which reported on the story, coercive sterilization of women has been reported in other South and Latin American countries as well as Africa. In Chile, it has become the norm:

“Sterilization without consent or under coercion occurs with enough frequency and throughout the country to be considered systematic,” said Suzannah Phillips, primary author of the report, which included interviews with 27 HIV-positive women in five regions of Chile.

“It’s not an active government policy, but it is the result of government omission and not implementing its own guidelines.”

Information from The Global Post.

Remember when Dan Rather interviewed Bill Clinton in 2004 about his life and presidency for 60 Minutes? It almost perfectly summarizes everything that’s wrong with us as a species.

“The central question, if I may, and I know this is difficult,” probed Rather, breaching the issue of Monica Lewinsky. “The central question is: why?”

“I think I did something for the worst possible reason,” responded Clinton. “Just because I could. I think that’s the most — just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything.”

Having a reason doesn’t make it better. The moral question is about the action, not the reasoning. Nevertheless, the idea that we need reasons to do things continues to be cultivated in the American mind. Slowly, we move toward efficient, streamlined living, demanding that everything we do have A Reason.

As a result, we do not play or allow our desires real expression. We organize “networking events” where we get belligerently drunk because we “don’t have time” to have drinks with friends. We attend conferences where we fuck everyone in sight — usually drunkenly and badly — because we have no reason to date these people. We dress like super whores, but only on Halloween, because we don’t have a reason to express ourselves at any other time.

And we get really excited when we see articles like this one from CNN Dr. Gupta and this one about research by Dr. David McKenzie and Sue McGarvie that spell out reasons you should have sex once a week.

Researchers at Wilkes University found that sex releases an antibody that protects against colds and infections! Plus the flood of endorphins and corticosteroids that accompanies a orgasm offers pain relief!

But there is more! Research by biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, Ph.D,. suggests a correlation between regular sex and success at work, possibly because sex can increase confidence and increase self-esteem! As Steve Jobs would say: AMAZZZZZING!

And if that’s not enough, prostaglandins in semen help reduce wrinkles and delay skin aging. But wait! There’s more! Orgasms release testosterone which is linked to helping build stronger bones, too! Wow!

And did we mention that the oxytocin released during sex helps you sleep better after you’re done boinking? That’s right! And as we all know, unless you’re Eliot Spitzer, sex is cheaper than a Tempurpedic, people! Look at all the reasons to have sex!

You want our advice? Quit looking for reasons. Give yourself one day every week — or even one hour every week — where you do something you don’t have to for no reason other than that it feels good. Because, really, if you need to be convinced to have sex, our species are pretty much doomed.

A contraceptive for men is soon going to start trials at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, just in time for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the female contraceptive pill!

Dr. Swerdloff, the director of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Male Contraceptive Clinical Trials Center, said the development of a male contraceptive has the power to change men’s view of their health and empower their reproductive decisions.

“Just as women gained greater control over their reproductive choices and their health with the advent of the birth control pill, a male contraceptive would get men more involved in their personal health care and would give them greater reproductive choices,” he said in a statement.

To this end, the institute is seeking 60 men ages 18 to 50 to test out a combination of hormone gels that will be applied to their arms and abdomens to see how they affect sperm count. The idea is that this hormonal gel will cut sperm count to levels where conception is not possible. According to researchers, discontinued use will result in the men returning to their normal sperm production.

Named after Dr. Christina Wang, one of the leading researchers involved, the test period is being called the “Wang male contraceptive trial.” If you giggle about it, we’re going to think less of you. This is very serious stuff, people.

OK, fine. Giggle. Then, if you’re a man, consider signing up for the study.

Information via the LA Weekly.

The Pill turned fifty years old this year and Time magazine has an incredible piece detailing our tumultuous, misunderstood relationship with it. If you read anything today, let this be it:

It was the first medicine ever designed to be taken regularly by people who were not sick. Its main inventor was a conservative Catholic who was looking for a treatment for infertility and instead found a guarantee of it. It was blamed for unleashing the sexual revolution among suddenly swinging singles, despite the fact that throughout the 1960s, women usually had to be married to get it. Its supporters hoped it would strengthen marriage by easing the strain of unwanted children; its critics still charge that the Pill gave rise to promiscuity, adultery and the breakdown of the family. In 1999 the Economist named it the most important scientific advance of the 20th century, but Gloria Steinem, one of the era’s most influential feminists, calls its impact “overrated.” One of the world’s largest studies of the Pill — 46,000 women followed for nearly 40 years — was released this March. It found that women who take the Pill are less likely to die prematurely from any cause, including cancer and heart disease, yet many women still question whether the health risks outweigh the benefits.

We take it for granted nowadays and its refreshing to take the time to stop and consider those who struggled for it and what the Pill itself helped catalyze. It almost makes us feel guilty for bitching about taking it every morning.

Then we read that Susan B. Anthony quote, here reiterated by Gloria Steimen: “Our job is not to make young women grateful. It’s to make them ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody.”

Well, we’ll feel a little grateful just the same. Just today. Before we get back to bringing sex out of the closet and boobquaking.

Photo of the Pill used in the montage by Jenny Lee Silver. Information from Time magazine.

The New York City Department of Health immediately issued a statement to remind bareback anal sex enthusiasts of the risks:

Anal membranes are easily damaged during sex, facilitating the spread of infection. Past studies suggest that anal exposure to HIV poses 30 times more risk than vaginal exposure. But the New York City findings suggest that women are less likely than men who have sex with men to use condoms during anal sex. The figure is just 23%, according to the new report, compared to 61% among men who have sex with other men.

We here at Sex and the 405 wonder how prevalent condom use is among men and women who engage in anal sex here in Los Angeles. Take care of your bodies, orchids. You only get one and there are things cosmetic surgery can’t address.

(How’s that for a Friday downer? You’re welcome.)

Information and graph from Animal New York, via @cthon1c.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks covers the issue at BlogHer: “Southworth believes classroom discussion of how to properly use contraceptives will lead not only to sexual activity between minors, but sexual assault on minors.”

She links a letter to school districts in Juneau County, where Southworth makes the following statement:

The teacher need not be deliberately encourage [sic] the illegal behavior: he or she only need be aware that his or her instruction is “practically certain” to cause the child to engage in the illegal act. Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior. Depending on the nature of the child’s behavior, the teacher could face either misdemeanor or felony charges with maximum punishments ranging from 9 months of jail up to six years of prison.

Can we get a WTF?

Madsen-Brooks offers some hard data:

It’s preposterous that teachers would reasonably believe that instruction on contraception could lead to sexual assault. According to data from the University of Wisconsin Health Institute, Juneau County’s teen birth rate is approximately 25 percent higher than the state average, and the county ranks 62 out of 72 Wisconsin counties in the Institute’s health behaviors index (which includes such data as chlamydia infection rates, smoking rates, smoking during pregnancy, binge drinking and the teen birth rate). Clearly, this is a county where young people need some instruction on health.

She raises a good point: a district attorney holds incredible power, and while generally elected, most voters tend to have no idea who their D.A. is. This is a big issue. Read her post to find resources and learn about your own D.A.

Information from BlogHer.