We really should, but the numbers show that almost no one does.
I remember my 27th birthday party better than I remember most
parties, mostly because of a guy who wasn’t even there. That week’s New Yorker included a feature
by Jerome Groopman, who warned of a new antibiotic-resistant strain of
gonorrhea colonizing the throats of hosts from Japan to Sweden: “the
harbinger of a sexually transmitted global epidemic.” Everyone was
talking about it. Couples clung tighter, singles tried to shrug it off,
silently praying they could pair off before this latest nastiness hit
our shores. The rueful consensus was that no one in attendance—no matter
their gender, race, sexual proclivities, or relationship
status—regularly used condoms for oral sex.
“We’ve always been talking about safe oral sex, but how prominent do we make it? More and more we are getting evidence that we need to talk about it pretty robustly.”
Earlier this month Michael Douglas told the Guardian
that his throat cancer was “caused by something called HPV, which
actually comes about from cunnilingus.” The dangers associated with the
terrifying new strain of gonorrhea are greatest for those who give oral
sex to men, but the risk of HPV-related oral cancers seems higher for
those who go down on women. A 2012 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association
found that 10 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women have HPV in their
throats. (It should be noted that the virus’ presence is not a guarantee of cancer.)
Along with these sexually-transmitted infections, pretty much
everything else is transmittable through oral sex: Standard-issue
gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis B, and chlamydia, the second easiest-to-catch STI in America after HPV.
For the rest of the story: http://www.psmag.com/health/why-dont-we-wear-condoms-for-oral-sex-60632/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+miller-mccune%2Fmain_feed+%28Pacific+Standard+-+Main+Feed%29
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