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.

Los Angeles is now the first city in the nation that requires performers to use condoms while shooting porn in areas that require permits. The Mayor signed the ordinance pushed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation on Monday. The law will go into effect 41 days after the City Clerk posts the ordinance publicly.

You can read the complete coverage about this on the LA Weekly. But for those of you who prefer the simple version, here’s a summary:

– The ordinance claims the adult industry is responsible for the ongoing epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the HIV/AIDS crisis in Los Angeles.

- This measure is tied to the acquisition of permits, so only performers who are shooting outside a certified sound stage are required to use condoms in scenes with vaginal or anal penetration.

- The ordinance makes no mention of protection during oral.

- The ordinance makes no mention of testing.

- Enforcement costs will be covered using the money filmmakers pay for permits. There is no mention of what entity will be enforcing condom use at shoots. The office of City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has doubts about the ability of the strapped Los Angeles Police Department to take this role and county health officials have raised concerns about regulating the industry through the Department of Public Health.

- The AHF plans to take condom enforcement to the county as a work-place license so that no matter where the shooting is happening or whether it requires a permit, all performers will have to use protection. In the meantime, they are talking with the mayor of Simi Valley, hoping they will adopt the L.A. ordinance. Other plans include taking the measure to San Francisco. AHF has vowed to follow the industry wherever it goes.

Read the ordinance yourself here.

Image of condoms by Robert Elyov, image of Jessica Janson from her collection.

KTLA is reporting that Playboy Playmate and former Baywatch babe Donna D’Errico was singled out by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent while going through airport security at LAX for a full-body scan — and not because she looked like a threat, if you get our drift.

D’Errico was on her way to Pittsburgh with her teenage son when it happened.

“A male TSA agent took me by the elbow and said come with me,” D’Errico told KTLA. According to D’Errico, no one else was pulled out of the line for a scan. When she inquired why she was the only one selected for a body scan, the agent allegedly told her, “because you caught my eye and they didn’t.”

D’Errico said the agent pointed her out to other agents afterward, smirking, and she was not given the option to have a pat-down instead of a body-scan.

“I think these are young men and they hang out together and they’re buddies, and they see an attractive woman and they think, ‘hey, I’m going to give my buddy a thrill,” she said. She wants the TSA to take a closer look at their “randomized” system of body-scanning.

Someone should give her a pair of these for Christmas.

Their latest campaign, which pokes fun at the Transportation Security Administration’s new full-body scan measure depicts a security scan of a woman (all boobs, ribs and razor-sharp hipbones) in her bra and underwear, which reads: “Be Proud of Your Body Scan: Go Vegan.”
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We’re here to tell you that in moderation, you too can eat bacon and have a sexy security scan. Just kidding. We’re here to tell you that you’re beautiful just as you are.

In an interesting turn of events, major airports in the country have rejected the ad campaign at their security check-points. McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, denied it on the grounds that it prohibits political ads, to which PETA Vice President Dan Matthews responded that PETA hasn’t taken a political position their airport security measures.

Southwest Airline rejected the ad in their in-flight magazine Spirit, saying it was too provocative. To that, Matthews said, “The airline may have canned it because the company is based in Dallas, the heart of the beef belt.”

We’re now accepting members for our People for the Ethical Treatment of Omnivores group.

You may remember Cyan Banister, one of the founders of the only venture capital-backed adult startup, Zivity. Well, according to the Associated Press, Banister and her husband donated $4,800 to Rand Paul, a Republican running for Senate in Kentucky.

Why is this a big deal? Because Banister is a porn-peddler and Paul is a Republican, of course!

Never mind that it makes perfect sense for sex-positive individuals to identify with a candidate who supports a more limited role for the government. This is a clear attempt by the opposition and the media to tip the scales in favor of Democrat Jack Conway, also running in Kentucky.

“A lot of Kentuckians would have a problem with a candidate accepting money from organizations that are tearing down the culture,” the AP article quoted Martin Cothran, who is a policy analyst for The Family Foundation of Kentucky. “We assume that when the Paul campaign finds out about this, they’ll return that money.”

We here at Sex and the 405 were disappointed with the statement issued by the Paul camp, which condemned pornography and, according to the AP, said it considers it degrading to women.

The campaign asserted that it “cannot be expected to run background checks on all 25,000 donors who share his stances on issues like balanced budgets, reduced federal spending, opposition to ‘Obamacare’ and the reckless behavior in Washington.”

This view is similar to that of Pennsylvania’s Republican Pat Toomey, who received a $4,800 contribution in November, 2009, from Scott Banister, co-founder of Zivity, and Cyan Banister’s husband.

“Many supporters do not agree with Pat on every issue,” Toomey campaign spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik told the AP. “But they tend to share his belief that the government in Washington is too big, it taxes too much, and it is sticking future generations with far too much debt. We’re happy to have those supporters, even if we differ on some issues.”

Cyan Banister responded to the press brouhaha via e-mail, saying:

My point of view is that our country is in danger of losing some of its most valued freedoms. The Pauls have strong values that resonate with mine. I believe they support limited government, tax reform, are against nationalized health care.

No word yet from the Paul camp about whether they will return the donation.

Information from The Lexington Herald-Leader.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now what the tea party movement is all about. If you have been living under a rock, let us explain: it’s a bunch of libertarians and conservatives getting together freaking out about stimulus packages and bailouts and generally supporting a more limited government, balanced budgets, and free markets.

Chicago’s Admiral’s Club (a gentleman’s club) is very serious about these issues. They hosted a Sarah Palin look-alike contest on Wednesday to raise funds for the Tea Party Campaign.

“Politicizing sex or sex for causes seems to cheapen the act,” said Brooks Bayne, local Independent and active participant in the tea party movement. He didn’t specify whether he was referring to the act of sex or the tea party movement as being cheapened, though he did add that “having sex with someone who shares your political views is hot.”

A call to the club to inquire how much money was raised for the cause went unanswered.

Image from the Admiral’s Club. Via Ryan Paonessa.

Anyway, it was said to be loosely based on Laura Bush. In the book, the fictional first lady supports abortion. We bring this up because Laura Bush joined Larry King last week on his show Larry King Live and came out publicly about her stance on both abortion and gay marriage.

She told King that she understands “what George thinks and what other people think about marriage being between a man and a woman,” but she believes that “when couples are committed to each other and love each other that they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has.”

She also still believes that abortion should remain legal “for medical reasons, and other reasons.”

Some have criticized the former first lady for only making these statements only now that she has a book to promote. Her autobiography, Spoken from the Heart, was released earlier this month.

Information from PoliticsDaily.

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.

Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (Läkemedelsverket) has banned three brands of silicone breast implants due to their risk of bursting. Gnarly.

They estimated that some 35,000 European women have had their breasts augmented with dangerous Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) since 2001. Sweden is following France’s example, who has done the same and is now offering the 1,000 affected women an alternatives.

“This is the type of information that we are trying to find out. We hope to be able to release information as soon as possible,” said Staffan Strömberg at the agency.

Strömberg said he does not see any reason for Swedish women who have these implants to be overly concerned at this time.

Image from journal.lv. Information from The Local, via @ericludzenski.

Classy, dude. Classy.

“I would like to deeply apologize for the insensitivity of this post,” the Manchester Democrat said in a statement. “It was a poorly thought out comment, posted jest on my private Facebook page. This, of course, does not excuse the comment. This type of statement has no place in public or private discourse. It does not represent any true opinion, political or personal.”

Watch the clip, via the HuffPo:

We try to be unbiased about this stuff and let you make your own opinions, but anime is just not something you mess with. The guy is a douche and we hope he gets a really nasty rash.

Anyway, here’s some anime hotties to make us all feel better.

Information via the Huffington Post.