protocal for oral - safety, precautions

[lost_j1]

Here are some more points to add to the list;

This report first appeared at WebMD, and was then carried by FoxNews.com. It is interesting in that it reports what many in the medical field have knowingly kept quiet about for some time, that HIV/AIDS can be spread through "oral" contact. Despite this reluctant admission, there is still the politicalization of the issue, with supposed experts downplaying the study's implications or calling for inept preventive measures.--BH


AIDS May Spread Through Oral Contact, Study Finds
Saturday, December 04, 2004
By Daniel J. DeNoon
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AIDS Vaccine Implications

The real reason for Sodora's study was not to evaluate the relative danger of receiving unprotected oral sex. The idea was to look at how HIV enters the body when it encounters mucous membranes. One theory is that HIV has to multiply on mucous membranes before it can cross into the bloodstream. It would be great if this were the case. That would give vaccine-stimulated immune responses time to find and neutralize the virus. But the Sodora study shows this isn't the case. Just one day after placing AIDS virus in monkey's mouths, the animals had detectable virus in their lymph nodes. Three days after that, the virus spread throughout the body. The findings appear in the December issue of the journal AIDS. "If you really want to prevent HIV infection, you need to block the virus before it ever infects that first target cell," Sodora says. "This requires antibodies at the mucosal surface. Interestingly, a lot of vaccines studied now are designed to elicit [killer-cell] responses. That is supposed to kill infected cells and suppress viral replication. But I think that is too late to prevent infection." Many of the AIDS vaccines now under study do, in fact, stimulate anti-HIV killer cells. Even if they don't prevent infection, these vaccines are likely to delay or even prevent AIDS in people who become infected. "We are working very diligently to develop effective AIDS vaccines," Sodora says. "The first generation of AIDS vaccines are now being tested. There is hope they will help people. But we should think about the second generation of vaccines. ... We should be striving to prevent infection. It is a long shot — a home run — but our sights should be set on that. We should be swinging for the fences." Despite this new hurdle, Chinglai Yang, PhD, thinks AIDS vaccines have a good chance of preventing HIV infection. Yang is an AIDS vaccine researcher at Atlanta's Emory University. "I work in this field and I know this is a very tough job to accomplish. But I do think you can actually have a vaccine with a preventive effect," Yang tells WebMD. "If you have a vaccine that can reduce the incoming virus load by 90 percent, you will effectively reduce the transmission rate by 60 or 70 percent. Yes, some vaccinated individuals will get infected. But now the estimate is one HIV transmission per 1,000 acts of intercourse. If you can change that to one in 5,000, you have a much smaller epidemic — assuming people's behavior stays the same."

By Daniel J. DeNoon, reviewed by Michael W. Smith, MD
SOURCES: Milush, J.M. AIDS, December 2004; vol 18: pp 1-10. Donald L. Sodora, PhD, assistant professor of internal medicine, infectious diseases, and microbiology, University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, Dallas. Kimberly Page-Shafer, PhD, MPH, associate adjunct professor, department of medicine, and Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco. Chinglai Yang, PhD, assistant professor, Emory University, Atlanta.
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These figures leave 4 percent of known AIDS patients who became infected with the disease through heterosexual contact. Some health officials estimate that in the 1990s the number of AIDS cases resulting from heterosexual contact will increase to 6 percent, though this is still a matter of some debate in the medical community.

A more alarming statistic is that, based upon the 1986 Surgeon General's Report, we have at least 1.5 million carriers of the HIV virus in the United States. Most of these people do not know they are carriers and thus may unknowingly transmit the virus through sexual activity or intravenous drug use.

Although there is some disagreement about the number of modes by which the AIDS virus can be transmitted, there is near universal agreement that it can be transmitted in at least four major ways: sexual activity, intravenous drug use, blood transfusions, and perinatal infection, which occurs when an AIDS-infected mother passes the virus to her child during pregnancy, labor, or delivery.

The primary modes by which the HIV virus is spread are blood, semen, and vaginal secretions. The virus has also been found in other body fluids such as saliva, tears, breast milk, and urine. Yet there is scant evidence that AIDS is passed through casual contact. The Public Health Service has stated that no evidence exists to suggest that there is a risk of contracting the HIV virus from day-to-day social or family contact with someone who has AIDS.

An AIDS study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1987 supported this conclusion. Doctors studied the nonsexual household contacts of patients with AIDS or ARC (AIDS-related complex). The study analyzed 101 people (68 children and 33 adults) who had contact with one of 39 AIDS patients for at least a three-month period. These subjects shared household items (razors, combs, towels, clothes, drinking glasses), facilities (bed, toilet, bath, kitchen), and washing items (dishes, bath) with the patients. Moreover, there was a measurable amount of social interaction (shaking hands, hugging, kissing) between the subjects and the patients. Yet the doctors found that only one out of the 101 subjects evidenced infection with the virus: a five-year-old who most likely acquired the virus perinatally.

The results of this study, however, do not mean that the AIDS virus can never be spread by casual contact. Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard and Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute reported in the British medical journal Lancet that saliva was the mode of transmission from a man with transfusion-acquired AIDS to his wife. And, in the same journal two years later, one documented case of non-sexual, within-family transmission of AIDS was reported.

[toadly]

I guess it will be condoms all the way around for us then......

[lost_j1]

Originally Posted by toadly

I guess it will be condoms all the way around for us then......

Don't get me wrong it's always your choice, but just be informed of all aspects before making any decsions about your life.....

[Snake 'n Bunny]

I'm with you Lost. I realize you can't cover ALL the bases in life, but feel you should at least cover the ones you can. My cousin contracted genital herpes from her husband during oral sex when he didn't have ANY signs of a cold sore. This was twenty+ years ago before people were terribly aware of all this. People think they can tell by looking at someone, if they have good hygiene or contend they are DD free that they are being responsible. Sometimes the people themselves don't even know they're infected. That's why I have NO interest in some guy going down on me and potentially giving me something. The opposite could happen also....a woman could have genital herpes and give it to the guy so he's got outbreaks all around his mouth. And the fact of the matter is the experts themselves don't really know everything about it at this point so why on earth take such foolish chances. I realize a dental dam or Saran Wrap are no fun which is why my SO and I have decided NO oral with anyone else. I believe it would give me the creeps if I went to kiss him after he'd had his face buried in some other woman's pussy. Sure would ruin kissing for me. I also don't believe the study quoted by the gentleman stating that they felt most cases of AIDS were passed through anal sex. I also read an article which claimed that the group with the fastest growing AIDS population were women between the ages of 40 and 55. Now THAT'S pretty scary. Many tend to think of it as being primarily in the homosexual community but there are folks that swing both ways and bring it on home to their partner. And not even the experts have all the answers. I'm just not willing to take that chance. This is only a fraction of our lives and I'd like us to be able to enjoy the rest of it without being hindered by disease. My son's girlfriend's mother has AIDS and I can't even begin to tell you the devastation it's brought to that poor family. It spills over into areas you wouldn't even think and has even affected our family, to a lesser extent of course. No, condoms are not 100% coverage but they at least offer SOME protection which is better than nothing in my opinion.

Okay I'm pooped and I guess I've rambled on long enough. See ya in chat.

Bunny

[DGrey]

I never used condoms for BJ's even when I was single and don't now that we're swinging. It's like chewing on a balloon. Life is never without some risk.

E

[good times]

I realize I am not going to change anyone’s mind who has already determined what they wish to believe, and I am not even sure I would want to if I could. This topic is always an interesting one for me though, mainly because I am one of those weird people who actually enjoy reading dry technical manuals and research papers.

Interesting news articles you have there Lost j1. However, like most news articles they give the message the writer wanted to give regardless of the facts. News reporters are notorious for being able to find the "expert" to give them the view they want, that does not make it true though. I find many of the recent news articles interesting because in order to properly scare the people they have to quote studies from the mid to late 80's to make their points. The reason they do this is that data that is more up to date has proven that those studies were flawed. Fact is, even if you have heterosexual unprotected vaginal sex with someone who is HIV positive, and you are otherwise healthy, with no contributing medical problems of your own, it is unlikely that you will contract AIDs from that person. In addition, I have yet to find one researcher, who does not have an agenda, that currently believes that you can contract AIDs through oral sex. If AIDs was as easily transmitted as they thought in the 80's it would have actually become the "epidemic" that they predicted. As it turned out most experts now say that the feared AIDs epidemic never materialized.

That being said, if I thought that their was the remotest chance that I would encounter someone in swinging that had AIDs, and I still wanted to do it, I would definitely use condoms, as AIDs is one of the few STDs that it is believed that condoms can significantly reduce the risk of transmission.

By the way, if anyone is interested, from my recent reading on the subject, the current generally accepted estimate of the rate of HIV transmission from an HIV positive female to a non-infected healthy male partner having repeated unprotected vaginal sex is about 1 in 2000.

[lott]

I forgot to mention that along with beyond seven condoms(www.beyondsevencondoms.com) you should use sheer glyde dams(http://www.sheerglydedams.com/) or (http://www.condom.com/sheer-glyde-dams.html) when you have oral sex on a woman especially because of the vagina's extensive mucosa.

These are MUCH better than dental dams because they are made for sex which means they aren't as thick as dental dam and they have a silk like feeling to them.

For the best results as far as feeling when using condoms or dams, use a little bit of lube inside the condom where the tip is at or around the penis head and also lube up the outside of the vagina before you have oral sex.

Sliquid H20 is a wonderful water based lube that is in gel form(http://www.sliquid.com/h2o.htm).

Sliquid silk is water based with just a little silicone to add to the sensation of slipperyness as well as longevity as to being slippery.(http://www.sliquid.com/silk.htm)

You can also try maximus gel if you want something that last long but it does have a taste you might not like unlike h20 which has virtually no taste.

Also, if you have little tears in your skin this will most likely irritate it unlike the h20 BUT if you have sex where there is a good amount of lubrication involved microscopic tears shouldn't be a problem unless you are stretching the vagina at a great extent such as the case with a big dildo or doing anal. I recommend you get both of them and see which one you like.
(http://www.bodywise.sageweb.co.uk/maximus.htm)

All this might seem like a lot but it isn't in fact it adds to the build up having the encounter take place. Remember its all in the mind and building up a habit of constantly doing these things will make it normal.

REMEMBER BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY. PEACE.

[Snake 'n Bunny]

Well, I am the Snake half of Snake and Bunny. She is my SO and I can’t imagine how I went through this wretched existence without her words in me BUT, I digress! LOL!
Now then, who told you that reading "dry technical manuals was not normal! LOL! Being an engineer and scientist of some consequence I can argue it is the only way to acquire data and then resolve the issues in your mind. I believe that we all can agree that there is SOME level of risk in life no matter WHAT we do. The idea is to limit or at least manage the risk so that we may understand what we are doing. Once I have a hardon and our blood is fever pitched is NOT the time to make that decision. I can assure you ladies that when Bunny is as hot as I am, she and I will always make the WRONG decision and later be pissy about it. It’s why we try to do the things up front. That is why Bunny and I have agreed that there will be no oral with any one but each other. LOL! Say what you will (quietly) but that is a decision that we reached after MANY ours of discussion and examination of the odds and the transmission rates. True, any fool can, and generally does, quote some "study" to get what data they wish! Scientist shopping is the new tool of the agenda driven media.
The old saw of “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure!” was never more true than it is today. We MUST all gather data to make up our own minds. I HIGHLY recommend this. DO it, or pay the consequences forever more.