The Epidemic Has a New Face

STUDY: MASTURBATION CAN SPREAD HIV   

By Marcel Girodian
The New York Times

Oct. 29 -- Safe sex education was thrown into disarray today with the release of a new study indicating that masturbation can spread the AIDS virus.

The study, published in the journal Virology and Yachting, concluded that people with dry, rough hands or cuts on their hands are vulnerable to catching HIV, the virus that causes ads, when they use their hands to masturbate. The scientists found that sperm or vaginal secretions often get on the hands during masturbation, and the HIV viruses in these substances can penetrate tiny openings in the skin.

The authors of the study, virologists Bud Abernathy and Lou Costizski of Harvard University admit that they were shocked by their findings.  "Like everyone, we assumed that masturbation was safe sex," said Dr. Abernathy. "But we found that, under certain conditions, a person can actually infect himself with the AIDS virus. The virus has mutated to the point that it doesn't need person to person contact anymore."

Dr. Costizski elaborated: "Let's say you have HIV, so like a good citizen you refrain from having sex with others, and you masturbate instead. Bad idea! Our data indicate that you can infect yourself with HIV by doing this."

This "intra-personal contagion," as Abernathy calls it, is now the fastest growing transmission segment in the AIDS pandemic. "With over 2 billion people masturbating in Africa every day, they are spreading the virus to themselves at an alarming rate," he said grimly. He compared the situation to the extinction of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic era. "Just as huge eruptions of volcanic lava covered the dinosaurs and caused their extinction, billions of huge HIV-infected orgasms covering billions of hands will cause the extinction of the Africans!"

"...unless you help," added Costizski, appealing to the public to support important AIDS research.

Famed AIDS expert Dr. Bobbit Gallo, who in 1984 concluded that HIV caused AIDS when he found the virus in 36 percent of the AIDS patients he studied, but not in the other 64 percent, praised the scientists' logic. "I can't find a single flaw in it," he said.

The impact of the study reverberated swiftly throughout the corridors of power. Dr. Anthony Faust, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced an immediate crackdown on masturbation. "This is a public health emergency and we've got to take strong measures," he said.

Gallo agreed. "Congress needs to act and act now," he said. "If masturbation can spread the AIDS virus then it must be outlawed, with all violators given stiff prison terms."

Others suggested a kinder, gentler policy. "If we can simply mandate the use of microbicidal gloves when people masturbate, we can avoid the appearance that government is getting too intrusive," said Senator Hillary Rodham Cliton (D-NY). Asked about enforcement, she said, "We can put surveillance cameras in the bedrooms of people who the president suspects are masturbating. From a civil liberties standpoint, this is preferable to incarcerating them without trial at Guantanamo Bay." She indicated that her staff is already drawing up the needed legislation.

President Bush has called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council to deal with the crisis spawned by the study. The Southern Baptist Convention and Pope Benedict have praised the study and pledged their assistance in bringing about the necessary behavioral changes.

© 2006 Marcel Girodian

Marcel Girodian is a satyr -- I mean a satirist -- who specializes in objective reporting about the "scientific community." His application for a $5 million grant to write about the AIDS establishment was recently turned down by the NIH. (Otis)

Comments

[Mrs. Claypool]

I hope some of the scientists reading this forum can answer this question. If I take ARVs every time I masturbate, will that protect me from contracting the virus? I am very worried...

[Dr. Hackenbush]

Mrs. Claypool,

Since it has only just now been discovered about the risks of masturbation, there have been no studies about the effectiveness of ARVs as prophylaxis.

My advice to you is to calm down. Until we can get some clinical studies going, simply avoid masturbating. That's not so hard, is it?

[Zachie]

I think the situation is too critical to wait for clinical trials. Based on what we know now about ARVs serving as effective prophylaxis for needle sticks, I think we should go ahead and recommend that she (and others in the same boat) take ARVs right away. I'm sure that future clinical trials will validate this approach.

[Costizski]

I agree with Zachie, and furthermore, it is essential that the ARVs be started before the person seroconverts from positive to positive.

Dr. Costizski

[Lee Bailey]

Great gadzooks! Perhaps, the CDC should commence a public service campaign to promote the use of condoms for masturbation.....;)

[Knobless Oblige]

It is clear that you gentlemen (if that is indeed what you are, and not a bunch of 'cules posing as persons) need some education in elementary "HIV/AIDS mathematics".

The important point you *all* seem unable to grasp, and this includes the Abbott and Costello of the Cambridge of the US, and their cheerleaders in Washington with and without skirts that they wear in public...wink wink nod nod)is THIS:

When adding negative values, the sum is always MORE negative than the parts.

Thus, An (x+y)(n) of ARVs is less worse than (a+b)(n)), when [x+y)(n)] < abs. val. 2[(a+b)(n)]. And at values of (x+y) approaching 0, there is hardly any danger at all.

Similar quantitative reasoning provides the following surprising, but none the less completley and verifiably true proposition:

A panel of "HIV/AIDS" Experts" becomes less and less expert the more experts are added. And as a corollary, a panel with no "HIV/AIDS" experts is theoretically the best one could do...like breaking even at absolute zero thermodynamically speaking so to speak.)

[Back to Undergrad and Now Really Confused Gal/Guy (XX/XY)]

First...never trust hacker roomies who sleep through calculus 206. Not because anyone really *needs* whatever it is that they teach in that class but because it means they are lazy and not to be trusted with anything that requires extended like for more than two minutes hello thought and when i went to get my diploma with the forward and back dated simultaneously graduation date i discovered that i had instead been charged 34 hundred fing dollars in unpaid library fines for books that don't even exist. You can just imagine what I had to say to my roomie who only woke up her computer and looked at some lines of what they call code and then laughed a lot and said imagine one missing backslash did all of *that* wow. I didn't find it so funny and now I have to go back to classes until she can find a new backdoor because the palace guards plugged the one she used last month. I guesss this proves you should never trust bogus escape plans which maybe dont always get you where they promise.

Nevermind 'cause I kinda like school now that I have discovered this neat site which is way way better than my ditzy biology prof's and EVERYBODY says so even her hair dresser who we share.

Anyways. Dr. Knobless, Doesn't that also mean that self infection is *less bad* than sex infection and therefore good? So what's all the fuss about?

[DT]

Once again I must comment here to explain to any of the gullible who may have been reading this nonsense thinking it worth their time.

I have MY OWN copy of TODAY's NY TIMES and I assure you that the story above appears NOWHERE in its pages and that I cannot find it anywhere in the online edition (to which I subscribe under my *real* name, and several others)
and when I Google "NY, Times, and New Epidemic" I get this link as the ONLY fit.

So once more YOU are ALL caught out in LYING and TRYING TO FOOL PEOPLE who you think are not as smart as you but who are really a whole lot smarter.

So there. And Pharma Bawd (NOT Ditz, and Dale, NOT Daffy) say so too. And we *still* have thousands of more believers than you creationist denialist immoral morons. So there, again! We win. We always win.

[M.D. Onan]

It is very unscientific, not to say dishonest, of the so called 'experts' here to answer Mrs. Claypool's question, since she is obviously an individual. Every scientist knows, and should be proud of the fact, that science has nothing to say to or about individuals.

Mrs. Claypool I'm afraid that until you turn yourself into a statistically significant sample of the general population, large enough to be divided into a minimum of 5 arbitrary subgroups, you are on your own so to speak, and very much at risk of obscuring the issue.

Having said that, since in all the known literature, comprising some 200,000 studies, there is as yet not a single one to show that the risks of administering pre-masturbatory ARVs outweigh the benefits, I'd advice you to err on the side of caution and start munching right now.

However, since you unfortunately are a member of that minority we, rightly or wrongly, designate as 'individuals', you are subject to intro-individual bio-diversity, including the risk of abnormally high tolerance level to DNA chain terminators. This is nothing to be ashamed of per se, but to make sure you achieve the desired endpoint (as my colleague, Dr. Sam "the man Mengele" Broder, so strikingly puts it) you must start on at least quadruple doses.

One way of turning this difficult and potentially embarrasing situation into erotic fun for the whole family (and beyond) would be to let Mr. Claypool feed you the ARVs while you masturbate. You could furthermore play with the NSA people monitoring your drug intake via those sexy little surveillance cameras by inviting them in to check for themselves whether the goodies are real or just placebo.

I hope this is of help to you, and good luck in becoming part of the national average.

Your best friend
M.D. Onan

[Clueless in Suburbia]

I may be clueless in suburbia today, but once not so long ago I was sophisticate in the city and was paid almost a living wage to write headlines (and other lies) for a world famous, daily publication that is not the *LA* Times ("Wink, wink. Nod, nod").

I should like to suggest to Otis, or whoever writes the headlines for Girodian's columns, that they need to go back to yellow jounalism school. They are dreadful.

For example, the one today should obviously be.

The Epidemic Has a New Face and It's a Hand

(My hubby is gone most of the day, and if you want to hire me on the QT, email works for free, but I don't.)

[Noman Chompsky]

I challenge the good professors down the street on the grounds of another elementary principle of arithmetic that even the members of the Harvard biology labs who were born after the deadly virus was invented (and I use the term exactly as Prof. Duesberg did in his book on the subject) should know, namely:

The product of two negatives is a positive -- precisely as the not so confused ambiguously genotyped commenter pointed out!

To say it again, and more plainly perhaps.

Like every, single previous triumphed finding resulting from 100 billion maybe more taxpayer dollars burned over one quarter of a century and counting, this one is not worth the paper it is printed on (and in this case since it only exists in cyberscripts, it is not even worth that).

There is no possible way that the multiplication of two 0"s" can yield anything except a third "0" - that is no bigger than the two that were multiplied to make it, and no smaller either. And I beg off the question of countability, since I have no more time left for the blogs today and have to get to the football.

BTW young whatever you are, you can join my extensive operation whenever you get a real piece of paper -- the otherwise nits that run the MIT are sticky about that, and being nerds to the nth, they have ways of finding out what is real and what is bogus...just ask David Ballemore aka Pope David I.

[DT]

I see someone has posted above using the same initials as I have used in previous posts to this board. Just to point out that it is not me. I have never even seen a copy of the NY Times.

[3:34 AM / Note from Otis: 1. I swear on my sainted mother's ashes I did not post this. 2. If anyone makes a single one of the many obvious replies, it will be deleted immediately that I see it with no further remark, and the poster will find his or her IP in danger of having its entry visa cancelled. This particular foolishness has gone on quite long enough, even in my view. Thank you.]

[Mrs. Claypool]

I get the feeling you people are all into academic wrangling and name-calling and you are forgetting that there's a real human here who needs real medical advice! I wonder why I even bothered posting...