A decade and a
half of research by the
Pleasure Project has proven that social campaigns aiming to promote
safer sex practices and HIV prevention are much more effective when they focus
on sexual pleasure rather than “danger and disease,” according to a recent
article by The New York Times.
In partnership
with the World Health Organization (WHO), the small nongovernmental
organization called the Pleasure Project reviewed the results of safer-sex
trials and experiments over the past 15 years. After assessing more than 7,000
safe sex campaigns on their treatment of pleasure, Pleasure Project recently
published the peer-reviewed findings in the journal PLOS One.
“Sexual health
education and services have traditionally promoted safer sex practices by
focusing on risk reduction and preventing disease, without acknowledging how
safer sex can also promote intimacy, pleasure, consent and well-being,” said
Lianne Gonsalves, co-author of the report and a sexual health researcher
epidemiologist at WHO. “This review provides a simple message: Programs which
better reflect the reasons people have sex, including for pleasure, see better
health outcomes.”
The Times
report also stated that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are at record
levels in the U.S. and growing globally since pandemic closures set back
access to testing and treatment. In 2021, 1.5 million people were diagnosed
with HIV, the highest rate in years.
Anne Philpott,
a British public health specialist who founded the Pleasure Project initiative
in 2004, admitting that the results of the analysis even surprised her a bit
“If you had a
pill or a vaccine where you could show this kind of effect, everybody would be
talking about it, it would have all the headlines,” she said. “Now we have
evidence: Ignoring this blind spot, all the way through the AIDS pandemic, has
led to less condom use, and deaths we could have prevented.”
SOURCE: HIV PLUS MAG
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