would an std screening be too much to ask?

[gem]

I'm beginning to wonder.. if I am ever with anyone new again, I would love to know that they don't have anything. would any of you be offended by a request to visit a local health place or to show papers? do you guys think that maybe the health department should start issuing these type of cards? cards with a certain number on it that you can go and check out their status? it could take verification of the owner. I wish I had something like this for myself even.

[J & K]

Hummmmm....It would be great knowing a clean bill of STD free when swinging or being single. Be nice to just go and tell folks, "Here, spit in this test tube and I will be back in 5 minutes". Wow---this would be great and scary. We look at it this way---assume everybody has STD's so safe sex will always happen. Sure---"K" and myself we know we are STD free, but are the other folks? We all lie at some point in sexual history, but being carefull will or might keep you alive longer or STD free. Play it safe no matter what!!! If in a committed relationship then ask for the test later on, but not on the spot---just play safe!!!

[gem]

the thing is, I have always played safe. condom everytime. I still caught hpv. :\

[Regularguy]

Considering human papilloma virus is the same virus that caused warts on your fingers when you were a child, how do you know you weren't previously positive?

Also, HPV can be shed asymptomatically, or if you had an unobtrusive flat wart on your finger and was playing with yourself, you can have situs transference.

I am enjoying a woman on a regular basis and we have safe sex because we are both heterosexual, non iv drug abusers, non-blood product recipients and we are both disease free. She volunteered that she had been tested and I volunteered to go get tested without her asking, sparing her any embarassment from asking me.

That anyone gets HIV tested who isn't in a high risk group is a total weaste of time, but taking an HIV anti-body test is a waste of time AND money compared to a polymerase chain reaction RNA amplification test.

And using a condom is a curious behavior when I have yet to see a condom used for oral sex at a swingers club, and if a women insists on going down on a guy when he has on a condom, it is even more unlikely she will get out the Saran wrap when she wants him to go down on her.

You all would be better off wearing crash helmets, shoulder and knee pads, rib protectors, rubber gloves everywhere you go, and a positive pressure respirator mask, as all of these statstically will protect you better while driving then using condoms during intercourse.

Think about it, why don't you wear a helmet when driving your car? People are injured, maimed, dismembered and killed EVERYDAY in cars.

It all boils down to an acceptable risk level, and if you knew the true risk level associated with STD's and swinging, you wouldn't use a condom unless you also wore a helmet while driving.

[highlander]

Originally posted by gem
I'm beginning to wonder.. if I am ever with anyone new again, I would love to know that they don't have anything. would any of you be offended by a request to visit a local health place or to show papers? do you guys think that maybe the health department should start issuing these type of cards? cards with a certain number on it that you can go and check out their status? it could take verification of the owner. I wish I had something like this for myself even.

Personally, I would find a potential partner that requested test results to be something that would earn my respect.

Now, as far as practical issues: There are at home tests for both HIV and Hep-C. I can understand why folks might not want to leavfe a paper trail on testing for diseases for which there is no current cure-the workaround is to simply buy and at home test and take it in front of each other-and then call in for the results a few days later(there are some tests that give instant results available over the internet-this is a gray market because these tests haven't been FDA approved for sale in the US).

As far as saying that HIV testing for heterosexuals is a waste of time, I'd suggest some simple statistical analysis here. Screening according to HIV status would elminate over 90% of potential partners that might expose you to AIDS-it won't work perfectly because folks exposed the last 3-6 months won't show up as HIV+. Still, if you ask all potential partners to take an HIV test and only have tests with those that are HIV-, on the average, you'll avoid over 90% of those enounters that could otherwise involve an HIV+ partner. I haven't seen a PCR test that is available for home testing--that would be more effective but would also give some false positive results and would be more expensive. Folks differ on how much risk they are personally willing to take-I'm not going to discourage anyone from trying to protect their health.

As far as saying that you aren't worried about AIDS because you think your partner is a hetero-sexual/non-IV drug user. Well, lots of men lie about both homosexual encounters and IV drug use(you'd be real surprised at who some IV drug users include)-folks also tend to lie about encounter with IV drug users(i.e. prostitutes). A simple, $25/test can cut through a lot of lies when it comes to HIV.

[lnds]

Hi i just wanted to say:It's doesn't matter what your sexual preference is. IF you are having sex you are at risk... does it really matter whether you are at high risk or a low risk? risk is life or death.

[JustAskJulie]

Requiring an STD screening of potential partners would be basically pointless. Sure they got screened as clean last Monday, but now you are swinging with them on Saturday. How do you guarantee that sometime in the days between Monday & Saturday they didn't have unprotected sex with someone who has something. Or go beyond that, AIDS can take up to 6 week (or is it months?) to show up in a test. So just because a test came back negative really means nothing.

Things like HPV and Herpes can't even be tested for unless the person is showing symptoms (a wart or a sore).

As someone else mentioned your best bet is to assume that everyone has something and practice safe sex regardless. Check out your partners prior to sex for any sores, blisters, warts, etc. Remember that cold sores are a form of herpes and a cold sore on a womans mouth could transfer to herpes on your genitals if she goes down on you.

Being careful is the key.

[highlander]

First off, keep in mind that there are still some folks that are doing absolutely _nothing_ in the way of STD prevention at this point and do engage in various forms of risky behavior. The real question here is how to get folks to change their behavior in ways that just might work.

Originally posted by JustAskJulie
Requiring an STD screening of potential partners would be basically pointless. Sure they got screened as clean last Monday, but now you are swinging with them on Saturday. How do you guarantee that sometime in the days between Monday & Saturday they didn't have unprotected sex with someone who has something. Or go beyond that, AIDS can take up to 6 week (or is it months?) to show up in a test. So just because a test came back negative really means nothing.

Protected sex also has limited meaning. I've never seen any responsible, scientific source claim that condoms reduce STD transmission more than 90% or so for each incident. Now, that is _something_--and something that should be measurable(Though most of the studies that examine the issue are flawed in terms of things like sample size and other considerations).

The reasons why condoms are supposed to make sex safer
are
a) AIDS is pretty hard to get in the first place
b) if you have a community of people that are all using condoms, there is supposed to be some kind of multiplicative effect in the community as a whole.

The basic risk you take in sexual counters could be assesed by
(the risk your particular partner has a disease)*(the risk of transmission). In the case of AIDS, the risk per act is something like 1/1000 if you don't use a condom vs 1/10000 if you do---if you assume your partner is HIV+, the chance that your partner is HIV+ is going to vary among various populations--I have yet to see any good assessment on what the risks are in the swinging population--but it would almost certainly vary in different parts of the US and according to various other factors. Still, just as the pool of blood donors that have had a test that indicates they are HIV- is a less risky pool than the pool of blood donors that have had no test, requiring your partners to be tested is going to reduce risk somewhat.

In the case of AIDS, that risk could be estimated by looking at the rate at which that disease spreads and how soon test results are valid. Some people that are infected show up HIV+ after only 2-3 weeks, over 95% show up HIV+ in 3 months and 99.9% or so show up HIV+ in 6 months. Still, if you assume the population of HIV+ people is growing at 10%/year(in the US it isn't that fast), HIV antibody testing would weed out well over 90% of all people that are likely to become HIV+ the next year.

There was a lot of noise early in the epidemic that testing protocols wouldn't work. To date though, the only country that has actually turned the epidemic around(according to the world health organization, as measured by the portion of its population that is HIV+) is Cuba--they've been using a system of mandatory testing and quarentine. You can argue about the Cuban program on a basis of moral issues-but a lot of public health officials in the US blew off a lot of credibility in their statements about that program early on.

I'm not arguing here for avoiding condoms or other safety measures(i.e. examination of your partners). I'm saying that you can also measurably reduce risks by limiting your partners to those those that have recent negative HIV test results and avoiding people from high risk populations(i.e. people that use cocaine, methamphetamine or heroin-or have sex partners that do). I've never seen a good head to head comparison of condoms vs. testing--or a good examination of the synergistic effect of using both condoms and testing together.

I personally think that testing is a safety measure that is particularly adapted to swinging culture because it is something that can be done as part of club membership.

As far as your "best bet", I would say:
require recent(3 month) tests on all partners-and try to find partners with similar requirements.

Avoid partners that are from the drug culture or other statistically high risk groups.

Use conventional "Safer sex" protocols--assume that every partner may have _some chance_ despite your screening efforts of still being infectious.

[lnds]

I agree.

[TeamSoBe]

Uhh, Highlander, when did using blow and smoking crystal become risk factors for HIV infection? Cocaine is only an HIV risk factor if you inject it, and that's a pretty rare way to get ripped. I have never heard of injecting crystal but if that's even possible then it's rare. Some people inject other amphetamines like MDMA, but that's really rare too.

Either way, unfortunately for your strategy, swinging and "drug culture" are already hopelessly intertwined. Even if you try to avoid people that openly use drugs, you will still be having sex with people who lie to you about their drug use to get with you, or you will be with people who are drug free but who have themselves been with people who weren't. The more promiscuous you are, the less realistic it is to think that you can insulate yourself completely from risk factors, drugs or otherwise. Simple fact of life. Avoiding risk factors and simultaneously behaving promiscuously is just not possible.

[highlander]

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
Uhh, Highlander, when did using blow and smoking crystal become risk factors for HIV infection? Cocaine is only an HIV risk factor if you inject it, and that's a pretty rare way to get ripped.

First of, there is a scientific debate going on about exactly what is happening with AIDS(i.e. you have several Nobel prize winners saying the whole basic science in this area is extremely sloppy). AIDS doesn't correlate real highly to other STD's like syphillis and gonorhea which says there is something else going on. A lot of public perception here is centered around AIDS as a "gay" disease-but there is active research on co-factors that include use of amyl nitrate, cocaine and methamphetamine. If you think about it, it makes sense: someone that is utterly exhausted physically is going to be at greater risk of infection than someone that is utterly well-rested--you just don't get a good predictive model of the spread of AIDS if you think about it just as another STD.

There is a clear statistical correlation between use of cocaine and AIDS cases(about 54% or so-not as high as some other factors but enough to be statistically significant).

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
I have never heard of injecting crystal but if that's even possible then it's rare.
[/B]

We come from different eras. Crystal was one of the more common IV drugs in my day-of course AIDS could have a lot to do with peoples switching to smoking.

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
Either way, unfortunately for your strategy, swinging and "drug culture" are already hopelessly intertwined. Even if you try to avoid people that openly use drugs, you will still be having sex with people who lie to you about their drug use to get with you, or you will be with people who are drug free but who have themselves been with people who weren't. The more promiscuous you are, the less realistic it is to think that you can insulate yourself completely from risk factors, drugs or otherwise. Simple fact of life. Avoiding risk factors and simultaneously behaving promiscuously is just not possible. [/B]

Personally, I'm real turned off by the whole crystal/cocaine culture and wouldn't knowingly have sex with a user-to each their own-I just find the idea utterly gross. Other folks can do what they want-but I know what I like.

It is clear that statistically that people likely to get AIDS aren't a cross section of the population--there is just a social taboo in using the obvious selection criteria as a means of risk reduction.

I see a lot of folks in ads that request drug disease free. I see no reason why there isn't a niche for swing clubs that require negative drug tests and negative STD tests. What I would be willing to bet money on is that statistically, such clubs would show a lower rate of a variety of STD's that clubs that didn't have such screens in place.

As far as saying promiscuity==AIDS, well, that is tricky too. Lots of women in Africa that are infected are completely monogamous-but their partners aren't. Cuba has a serious culture of promiscuity(a lot of it centered around prostitution) but has turned the AIDS epidemic around via its program of testing and quarentine.

[TeamSoBe]

Highlander, monogamous women in Africa with AIDS are a good example of what I mean. You can make your own decisions, but if you have sex with a promiscuous person then all bets are off. If you're swinging then you're both promiscuous yourself and you're having sex with promiscuous people.

Gee, I hope that I'm spelling promiscuous correctly. I'm too lazy to check. Oh well.

That's interesting information about shooting up meth, I've never heard of that. That's just gross. I don't do it in any form personally, but I have never seen it as a risk factor. If it is considered a risk factor becuase of suppressing your immune response then I could see that, but it's still a pretty minor risk factor compared to, oh, say, people that have unprotected anal sex frequently. A lot of swingers do that.

I sometimes fantasize about a swing club that demands periodic negative STD screenings also, but I wonder if it would really be that good of an idea. The members would obviously take the screenings as an excuse to have crazy unprotected sex, so when one of your members does become infected with something it will spread very quickly through your group.

You seem to think that it's difficult for a healthy person to become HIV infected through unprotected sex with an HIV infected partner, but I have quite a few healthy HIV infected friends who would disagree with you. HIV is real, it's nothing to fuck around with, and downplaying the risk so that you can avoid wearing condoms is irresponsible.

[highlander]

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
Highlander, monogamous women in Africa with AIDS are a good example of what I mean. You can make your own decisions, but if you have sex with a promiscuous person then all bets are off. If you're swinging then you're both promiscuous yourself and you're having sex with promiscuous people.

Swinging doesn't necessarily=greater promiscuity or exposure. Who is at more risk of an STD or more promiscuous, a couple that has swing 3-5 times with other couples in the last 10 years, or two people that are single that have been together 2 years and have each had 5 other partners the last 10 years?

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
but I have never seen it as a risk factor. If it is considered a risk factor becuase of suppressing your immune response then I could see that, but it's still a pretty minor risk factor compared to, oh, say, people that have unprotected anal sex frequently. A lot of swingers do that.
[/B]

IV drug use is an obvious risk factor. Duesberg at UC Berkeley and
Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati both thought that amyl nitrate and other drugs that weren't IV drugs could be a major co-factor in the spread of AIDS. I don't have a strong opinion about their work-but the Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis backs them-and I personally consider him to be the greatest biologist of the last 30 years.

I've personally seen the stats that show a 53% correlation between cocaine use and AIDS-which is closer the syphillis correlation if memory serves me correctly here.

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
I sometimes fantasize about a swing club that demands periodic negative STD screenings also, but I wonder if it would really be that good of an idea. The members would obviously take the screenings as an excuse to have crazy unprotected sex, so when one of your members does become infected with something it will spread very quickly through your group.
[/B]

I've consistently advocated testing as a supplement for other precautions-not a replacement.

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
You seem to think that it's difficult for a healthy person to become HIV infected through unprotected sex with an HIV infected partner, but I have quite a few healthy HIV infected friends who would disagree with you.
[/B]

Hard is a relative term. Susceptability varies a lot from person to person and there are a lot of unknowns here. It is clear that AIDS doesn't spread nearly as fast as some other STD's(i.e. syphillis) and that the two diseases have a lot less correlation than is commonly understood. The odds I've seen on male/female transmission form a single encounter is 1/1000. Those odds get worse if you multiply them out over a period of time-a lot worse.

Originally posted by TeamSoBe
HIV is real, it's nothing to fuck around with, and downplaying the risk so that you can avoid wearing condoms is irresponsible. [/B]

IMHO it is irresponsible to promote condoms as doing anything more than reducing the chance of transmission from a single encounter by anything other than something like 90%. It is also IMHO irresponsible to turn condom use into a religious icon to the point that scientific investigation of other means aren't even explored-or for the FDA to effectively ban sale of instant HIV tests in the US-and in doing so retard the mass marketing of tests which now exist and are much more effective than the tests that are commonly in use(PCR tests give more effective results than do the antibody tests commonly in use).

But then, all this sloppiness shouldn't come as a surprise from a group of people that shout down scientific debate to the point that 3 Nobel prize winners that have serious reservations about the basic science in AIDS research are ridiculed by a bunch of bureaucratic posers. If you think I'm pissed here, you are right. I don't like seeing people needlessly dying slow painful deaths because some folks have anti-scientific attitudes and are threated by people that really do want to think deeply about these issues.

Mullis may or not be right for example. I consider it an crime against humanity that he doesn't have all the money he needs to conduct research in this area(in his case, he got $15K out of the most valuable single patent sale in history-something like $150 Million). If your want to get angry at someone here, get angry the execs at Cetus and other such con artists that are keeping guys like Mullis from doing what needs to be done here by their insane games.

[Tanman aka Mike and Marie]

For some people this is what it would take to be comfortable exchanging partners, but unless you had a test right before the swap and the test covered everything known to man it would be pointless.

For us a full-swap will probably never happen, the risk (of death or lifetime disease) is just not worth it. We will have to be content with soft-swap/no exchange of partners.

[Regularguy]

HIV continues to be almost impossible for heterosexuals to contract and the homosexual AIDS activist ploy of using the "but what about Africa?!" slogan to mislead has been debunked as utterly unlrealted to our epididemiological model in countries with Western standards of medical care and behaviors.

The Paladin study showed it takes an average of over 1000 acts of intercourse between an HIV seropositive male and HIV seronegative female for her to statistically seroconvert. That means that if you ran into a guy at a swing club who was HIV seropositive, on average, you would have to have sex with him where he came inside you 1000 times before you would statistically seroconvert.

Just doesn't seem to be the doom and gloom epidemic that male homosexual AIDS activists want you to think as a means of extorting $ out of the government which, you guessed it, homosexual activists control....otherwise they wouldn't have self labeled themselves the pink mafia.

All this can be researched and verified you know. Try reading the CDC's Daily AIDS Summaries broken down by groups. The CDC has knowingly exaggerated the hetero risk even though their stats show the risk is almost non-existent.

So for those who modify their behaviors because they think they are at risk, make sure you wear a helmet while you drive too.