Cream 'Could Stop Genital Herpes'

US scientists say they have developed a cream which could for the first time prevent someone from becoming infected with genital herpes.

The virus is carried by half a billion people worldwide - the disease can be controlled, but it is hard to stop it spreading to others through sex.

The cream appears to disable the virus' ability to replicate

This topical treatment, which has so far been tested only on mice, stops the virus from replicating in a new host.

The research appears in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

The type-2 herpes simplex virus is sexually transmitted and can cause painful, fluid-filled blisters to develop.

It can also be passed from mother to child during childbirth, putting the infant at risk of brain damage and even death if left untreated.

If we can reproduce these results in people, this could have a powerful impact on preventing transmission
Professor Judy Lieberman

The cream, developed at Harvard Medical School, uses a technique called RNA interference, which stops the genes the virus needs to replicate from working properly.

"One of the attractive features of the compound we developed is that it creates in the tissue a state that's resistant to infection, even if applied up to a week before sexual exposure," said Professor Judy Lieberman, who led the research.

"This aspect has a real practicality to it. If we can reproduce these results in people, this could have a powerful impact on preventing transmission."

Gynaecologist Dr Gillian Vanhegan said the cream sounded "very interesting indeed".

"Obviously you would have to know when to use it - but it could definitely be of value to people with a partner who was carrying the virus."

Dr Nathan Sankar, a consultant in genitourinary medicine at the UK's Newcastle General Hospital, said it was an "exciting" development but warned there was still a long way to go.

"It is still at the very early stages. In many ways a vaccine which could be taken and forgotten about would be better, but the cream is definitely promising."

As well as looking into whether the cream can be developed for human use, the team is investigating whether the same principles can be applied to protection against HIV/Aids.

Donors Up But Organs Still Short

The number of people on the organ donor register in the UK has hit a record 16 million, meeting a government target of doubling 2001's numbers a year early.

However, the gap between supply and demand for organs is still growing and 1,000 people are expected to die this year while waiting for a transplant.

A multi-million pound campaign is to be launched to encourage donation

The NHS figures show people in Scotland and the south-west of England are the most willing to become donors.

It is thought the debate on presumed consent may have boosted numbers.

The idea of introducing presumed consent, under which people would be placed on the organ donor register automatically unless they "opted out", was rejected last year by a panel of experts appointed by the government.

They said such a move was unlikely to increase donor numbers and posed a significant risk of eroding patient trust.

Instead, a £4.5m public awareness campaign is to be launched in England aimed at boosting voluntary donor numbers.

More than one in four people in the UK are now on the donor register.

But, despite the rise in numbers, the UK still has one of the lowest organ donation rates in Europe.

Since 2001, nearly 24,000 transplants have been carried out using donor organs, but at least 4,500 people have died while waiting for a suitable organ to become available.

This year, about 1,000 people are expected to die waiting for an organ.

There is a particular shortage of organs for black and Asian patients, who on average wait about three or four times longer for an organ than white patients, according to NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT).

Organ donor register rates are, at 32%, highest in the health regions that cover Scotland and south-west England, followed by the south-east coastal area of England at 30%, according to figures collated by NHSBT.

Lynda Hamlyn, the body's chief executive, said: "Reaching 16 million on the NHS Organ Donor Register a year before planned is testament to the support that exists for donation in the UK.

"More than a quarter of the population have demonstrated their commitment by signing the register.

"But, with almost 8,000 people in the UK currently waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, we need to do more."

NHSBT said it was looking at draft plans to try to increase the number of organ donors by a further nine million by 2013.

A spokesman said this was "a challenging target that we cannot achieve without a huge amount of public support".

Will Cybersex Be Better Than Real Sex?

BY JOEL STEIN
That depends on what lights your diodes. But judging by the quality of today's — "teledildonics," some things (hooray!) will never change

There are two fields in which i'm anxious to see technology improve: medicine and hard-core pornography. And since I'm not sick yet, I'm pretty focused on the porn thing. Luckily I am not alone in my stunted vision of utopia. The desire for newer, better smut has long been a major impetus behind technological progress: vcrs, dvds, Web development and I believe X-ray glasses were all spurred by prurient desires.

The holy grail of pornography, though, has always been a machine that delivers a virtual experience so real that it is indistinguishable from sex, other than the fact that it isn't at all disappointing. Though prototypes have appeared in films (the Pleasure Organ in Barbarella, the Orgasmatron in Sleeper, the fembots in Austin Powers), reality has remained painfully elusive. In his 1991 book Virtual Reality, Howard Rheingold devoted an entire chapter to "teledildonics," his not-so-clever name for devices that allow people to have sex without being in the same area code. Rheingold imagines putting on a "diaphanous bodysuit, something like a body stocking but with the kind of intimate snugness of a condom" and having a virtual-reality sexperience over the Net. "You run your hand over your partner's clavicle and, 6,000 miles away, an array of effectors are triggered, in just the right sequence, at just the right frequency, to convey the touch exactly the way you wish it to be conveyed."

Other than his fetish for Chinese clavicle, Rheingold is able to provide little that's useful in the way of information or specs. And in the nine years since he published his personal fantasies, there has been surprisingly little progress. Vivid, the world's largest producer of adult entertainment, promised to deliver an interactive bodysuit last September but missed its deadline. Sure, it had a $200,000 black neoprene suit with 36 electrodes stuck to the chest, crotch and other special places, but the suit didn't look very appetizing. Nor did it do anything. Vivid says it's waiting for fcc approval (interaction with pacemakers seems to be a concern), but the real reason it is lying low on the sex suit is that Vivid is a proud company, and it's not going to continue trumpeting a technology that is at best a long way from happening.

But there are less proud pornographers. SafeSexPlus.com sells teledildonic devices that, it turns out, look a lot like dildonic devices. The company promised that if I used these gizmos in conjunction with their iFriends.net website, I could have a sexual experience over the Net. I got SafeSexPlus to send me the equipment and figured I'd use it with my girlfriend — until I realized that was the dumbest idea I'd ever had. Thinking more clearly, I decided this might be my one chance to get a porn star to have sex with me.

Wicked Pictures, a major adult-entertainment company, set me up on a cyberdate with one of its actresses, Alexa Rae, star of Porn-o-matic 2000 and Say Aaah. I had never seen Alexa's work, but I was assured she was a complete professional. SafeSexPlus.com sent both of us toys, and we made an e-date.

I cannot fully describe to you the absolute repulsiveness of the sexual aid I was given — both because this is a family magazine and because the English language is not equipped for the task. It was supposed to be a disembodied part of a woman, but it was more like part of a really expensive Halloween outfit to which someone had haphazardly taped a lock of Dweezil Zappa's hair. It felt like wet latex, smelled like wet latex and looked like something Sigmund Freud might have used to make a very twisted point. I figured it was designed for men without hands.

The device plugged into an electrical outlet and came with suction cups. This frightened me even more than the Zappa hair until the people from SafeSexPlus explained that I was supposed to stick the suction cups on my computer monitor once the "cyberdildonics box" popped up. This box could be made darker or lighter by Alexa's controlling the box on her screen and would make my latex gizmo vibrate at higher or lower frequencies depending on how much light she decided to give me. I don't know what sexual experience was supposed be replicated by a vibrating disembodied female body part, but I didn't want any part of it.

I was to have the same sort of control over Alexa's marital aid, which I assumed would be somewhat less terrifying.

I assumed wrong. "It's a little scary," Alexa confessed as we talked on the phone and I squinted at a live picture of her on a tiny, fuzzy box on my screen. I'm pretty sure she's pretty and possibly blond. "It looks like it might hurt me. And it's making these ramming noises. Like a jackhammer." I had never prided myself on being a gentle and considerate lover; "ramming noises" and "like a jackhammer," however, were not phrases I was used to hearing.

Alexa, ever the playful one, told me she'd take off her top if I could make her light box change colors, so I got one of the tech guys at work to help me. Soon I could see her yawning on my monitor. This, I thought, was getting to be more like the sexual experiences I was accustomed to.

After 20 minutes, I think I got the color to change and the scary jackhammer noise to increase. "I get turned on by anything sexual," Alexa purred as she took off her top and jeans. "But not this."

We talked some more, and she told me she'd named herself after Billy Joel's daughter, which I thought was in bad taste. Then I realized, looking down at the giant latex pudendum jumping around my desk, that I wasn't in a position to comment on matters of taste.

Still, in the name of science I concentrated on the image of Alexa on the screen and tried to act sexy. "You are driving me crazy," I told her.

"Really?" she responded.

"No."

"Damn."

This was the high point of our encounter — that and when I admitted I was incapable of having phone sex. "Having good phone sex is just saying how you feel," she told me.

"I feel silly," I confessed.

"Not like that."

Eventually we decided to stop. "It has nothing to do with you," she said as she pulled her jeans over her hips. "We're just asking each other technical questions, and it takes away the sexiness." Virtual sex was indeed eerily like real sex for me.

Even if the technology vastly improves and if Alexa and I can one day consummate our awkward phone conversation, I don't think teledildonics is the next generation of pornography. Perhaps it might replace 900 numbers, with men paying to control the toys of women they can see on their screens, but that's about it. Most people will still want to enjoy their sexual fantasies alone, because even a programmable robot is going to be just an annoying, unsuccessful intermediary — not to mention a very difficult thing to hide in an underwear drawer.

And as far as real sex goes, no high-tech device can ever replace a living, breathing person. Because even if a machine felt real and looked real, it could never reproduce the real thrill of sex: knowing that another being is freely giving herself to you and that at least for a few minutes, you're not alone.

Now, why couldn't I come up with something like that when I had Alexa on the phone?

source: time.com