Male condom—Worn by the man, a male condom keeps sperm from getting into a woman’s body. Latex condoms, the most common type, help prevent pregnancy, and HIV and other STDs, as do the newer synthetic condoms. “Natural” or “lambskin” condoms also help prevent pregnancy, but may not provide protection against STDs, including HIV. Typical use failure rate: 18%.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/contraception.htm

The US Govt. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says it is 18%...

I think the 18% failure rate refers to the 'natural' condoms. They also don't protect you against STD's unlike the latex and other synthetic condoms.

EDIT: I was wrong, the 18% refers to overall typical use failure rate. AKA, what happens when you don't follow the instructions correctly and you misuse the condom. Perfect use failure rate is actually around 2%. If anything, this only highlights the vital nature of sexual education. People need to learn how to correctly and safely use a condom or otherwise its not nearly as safe as it can be.

Exactly. Sex education in schools, which includes how to use contraceptives properly is very important. Its not just condoms, the pill can be less effective if someone has been drinking excessively, or is on antibiotics.

Those condom safety numbers were clearly wrong. Condoms when used correctly are very effective. Apart from anything else, speaking as someone who reacts very badly to the pill I'd have a lot more children than I do if condoms were only 80% effective.

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Reality Internet Personality

Vasectomy is even more effective.

Agreed. I think charities like Oxfam would do a great deal to help the world's famine problems if they offered free vasectomies rather than just handouts of clothes and similar.

Here is the problem with free vasectomies.

You have 10 men and 1 fertile female.

9 men (90%) get vasectomies.

She still gets pregnant.

That is a really insulting thing to say about women. Think about what you just wrote there.

Women are people, they are capable of rational thought and being discriminating. I am quite sure that most women don't sleep with everyman they come across. I'd be willing to bet money on that.

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Reality Internet Personality

Years ago it used to be syphilis then gonorrhea, then HIV and Aids. At the moment in the UK there is an epidemic of Chlamydia amongst young women. 3 years ago when I left my College they had posters up everywhere offering female students free self testing kits sponsored by Personnel and the Students Union.

While a vasectomy is a pretty effective means of birth control it is all but ineffective at controlling STDs.....

True, it won't do anything to stop the spread of AIDS or other nasties currently ravaging Africa.

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

While a vasectomy is a pretty effective means of birth control it is all but ineffective at controlling STDs.....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Vasectomy is even more effective.

In some cases it should be compulsory. But it can be reversed.

Vasectomy is even more effective.

Agreed. I think charities like Oxfam would do a great deal to help the world's famine problems if they offered free vasectomies rather than just handouts of clothes and similar.

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

Male condom—Worn by the man, a male condom keeps sperm from getting into a woman’s body. Latex condoms, the most common type, help prevent pregnancy, and HIV and other STDs, as do the newer synthetic condoms. “Natural” or “lambskin” condoms also help prevent pregnancy, but may not provide protection against STDs, including HIV. Typical use failure rate: 18%.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/contraception.htm

The US Govt. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says it is 18%...

I think the 18% failure rate refers to the 'natural' condoms. They also don't protect you against STD's unlike the latex and other synthetic condoms.

EDIT: I was wrong, the 18% refers to overall typical use failure rate. AKA, what happens when you don't follow the instructions correctly and you misuse the condom. Perfect use failure rate is actually around 2%. If anything, this only highlights the vital nature of sexual education. People need to learn how to correctly and safely use a condom or otherwise its not nearly as safe as it can be.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

Wrong, condoms have a breakage rate of 0.4% and a slippage rate of 1.1%, and i have statistics to back that up.

Vasectomy is even more effective.

But even that is not 100% effective as it has had its failures too (most especially in the weeks just after the procedure and in some other cases the procedure not done properly).

Cheers.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

Wrong, condoms have a breakage rate of 0.4% and a slippage rate of 1.1%, and i have statistics to back that up.

Ok, so I rounded off a little...

Male condom—Worn by the man, a male condom keeps sperm from getting into a woman’s body. Latex condoms, the most common type, help prevent pregnancy, and HIV and other STDs, as do the newer synthetic condoms. “Natural” or “lambskin” condoms also help prevent pregnancy, but may not provide protection against STDs, including HIV. Typical use failure rate: 18%.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/contraception.htm

The US Govt. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says it is 18%...

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https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

Wrong, condoms have a breakage rate of 0.4% and a slippage rate of 1.1%, and i have statistics to back that up.

Vasectomy is even more effective.

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Reality Internet Personality

and i have statistics to back that up.

Not my preferred reading matter just before lunch .....

The people who think that the best way for kids to not have STD's and unwanted pregnancies is to teach them to keep their pants on are completely deluding themselves and have apparently forgotten how they were like when they were 15. In any case, try telling a 15 year old brimming with hormones to not have sex. Some will succeed, lots of others won't. But aside from that, what you are teaching them is dangerous. Statistics clearly show that in areas where abstinence is taught as 'sex ed' there are the highest rates of teen pregnancies AND the highest rate of STD's. Turns out, STD's don't magically disappear when you are in a monogamous relationship and you have married the girl.

On top of that, teens who are pregnant already and becoming a father/mother will perform a lot worse on school because you know, they now also have to worry about their child. I guess that learning for your SAT's is a lot harder if you also have to worry about the crying child next room.

Oh, and you think it used to be that much better? That during the time where sex was scandalous people didn't have sex? Think again. It just so happened that if one got the girl pregnant they were pretty much obliged to marry to prevent the scandal.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

Wrong, condoms have a breakage rate of 0.4% and a slippage rate of 1.1%, and i have statistics to back that up.

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

This business of mental arithmetic has come up before. Before we all had calculators and electronic tills, you had to add up and subtract in your head. Decimalisation made that easy, it was a lot harder in the LSD days, try working out the change from a £5 note for a purchase of £3 7s 9d, or 6 yards of fabric at 5s 11d three farthings a yard. Those drapers prices were not uncommon in their day, but all shop girls could manage quite well. Although some of the younger ones had a "ready reckoner" behind the counter. The trick then was to round up the price to the nearest whole number first then subtract the odd bit. Therefore the fabric would be 6 x 6s = 36s or £1 16s, minus 1 1/2d = £1 15s 10 1/2d, giving change of £3 4s 1 1/2d.

Modern Educationalists say that with the advent of calculators, phone apps, and electronic tills, there is no need to teach mental arithmetic any more, better to use the time to teach visualising concepts and the such like. Not sure I agree entirely with that view, but I can appreciate where they are coming from. As has been demonstrated, have a power cut and civilisation as we know it comes to an end.

But in my corner shop each day at 3.30pm you can see another aspect of it. Time and time again an 8 or 9 year old will pick a collection of candy, sweets, and comics from the shelves, plonk it all on the counter, then when it is rung up on the till, find that they haven't got enough to pay for it all, and have to put some back in front of their mates. Clearly they can't add up as they go along knowing what cash they have in their pocket. Often they just give the shopkeeper a few choice words and walk out with what they can pay for leaving the rest for someone else to put back. Which is the case of unwrapped sweets, you can't do because of the hygiene regs. All resulting in embarrassed kids, a pissed off shopkeeper, and a loss of stock.

It's the same with self assembly flat-pack furniture, I've lost count how many times I been called round to a friend or relative totally exasperated because they couldn't put a simple bedside table or similar together. Now, anyone of my age group can look at the picture on the front, and work out pretty quickly how it all goes together, with maybe a quick glance at the instruction sheet for confirmation. But of course as we all know, all this stuff is made in the Far East, and some of the English in instructions just makes you weep, apart from the diagrams being plain wrong. Often there is a couple of screws or a fastener missing from the pack which seems to totally confuse 90% of people.

Whatever they teach kids at school these days certainly doesn't seem to fully equip them for the world they are going to have to live in.

I'll leave sex education to another post.

Many years ago, a drive to promote condom use (french letters I believe was the term for them then) as an effective means of birth control was undertaken by missionaries working in Africa. With the use of a male translator and the end of a broom, the message was put across as to both the benefits of using them and how they should be used, and a large quantity of free condoms were issued to everyone who was interested. The women in the villages were very keen. (Up until that point they had been making use of stones containing traces of copper (the forerunner of the coil) despite the risks that posed to their health.)

A year later, the missionaries returned to find some very, very angry women, all with babies under a year old. They had thrown away their stones in favour of watching their husbands carefully roll a condom onto the end of a broomstick each night. The translator claimed he'd translated accurately - I have my doubts.

Sex education and disease prevention is such an important aspect of modern life that it is probably best that it isn't left to chance. Better that some children get the message twice than some not getting it at all.

Anyway... that's just what I think :) It's amazing what pops into our heads when we consider the end of civilisation though isn't it? :)

I got a bit confused in a busy ladies restroom the other day. Tried to dry my hands under a condom dispensing machine... then moved onto a travel toothbrush and toothpaste dispenser. Had the place in stitches. I might not go back there...

no one could buy any. All tills seem to need electricity nowadays, and automatic doors won't open.

I think I'm correct in that all till drawers have a manual release mechanism. Any enterprising shopkeeper could set up a few candles for light and sell some more by taking cash over the counter and ringing it up later when the power comes back. Pubs have been doing that for "afters" for decades! Although you wouldn't want to open a large supermarket with people helping themselves in the dark and sneaking out without paying.

At least here in the USA you have a bigger problem than just getting into the cash register (till as you call it... the manual release is usually with a key). There is sales tax to be figured and added in. The cash registers automatically figures it out. Some items are taxable, some are not. The cash register automatically figures it out from the item barcode. Then there is the matter of the change due the customer. Old phartz like me were taught in school to rapidly 'make change' in our heads, but the kids these days... Totally lost without the cash register telling them how much change to give back to the customer.

:) Ah yes... the age old problem of subtracting 79p/c from £/$1.00 - not enough fingers and toes.

The most perplexing one I recently experienced was paying for £5.02 worth of goods with a £10 note and a 2p piece. Bless her little cotton socks... she rang in the note and not the coin... then needed to have a long lie down. :)

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Schools these days are way too busy teaching kids crap like 'use a condom' to be able to teach vital life-skills, it seems.

I'm guessing you skipped that class or you'd have some idea what an important life skill it is.

Controlling fertility and reducing the spread of disease has been one of the things that has caused civilisation to flourish.

During WW1 150,000 British soldiers got either gonorrhea or syphilis while serving in France. I'd say that if they'd been taught to use condoms in school they might have served the war effort a little better.

Currently there are antibiotic resistant strains of these diseases that are becoming more prevalent. So I'd say the kids that can use a condom have a significantly better chance at survival than those that don't.

Worldwide 1,700,000 die of aids every year. Countries with the lowest rates of aids infection are the ones that have been teaching children how to use condoms.

For anyone to say that learning about safe sex is a waste of time in this day and age is a sign of such profound ignorance that no wonder the world is heading for collapse.

Not only am I totally stunned that someone would even say that teaching our youth to be safe and protect others is a waste of time, I am completely gobsmacked that anyone would agree. Are people really so ignorant that I even have to say this?

Well, since YOU are being insulting...

I know what 'important life skills' are. I also know that schools are there to teach the academic ones. Schools are failing miserably at even teaching the basic ones (such as reading, writing, and arithmetic) to WAY too many students. The fault for this is squarely on the teachers and their 'professional organizations'.

Those British soldiers from WW1 would NOT have gotten VD if they had kept their pants on.

Condoms are NOT a reliable method of birth control. About a 20% failure rate even when correctly applied and used. If pregnancy can happen, so can VD spread. Even hormonal birth control methods (which do NOTHING to stop spread of VD) have failure rates of between 0.5% and around 3%.

John and Jane may not be able to read the label on a bunch of bananas, or be able to figure out how much 0.7 kilograms of bananas cost without using a fookin calculator... But they DO know how to put a condom on one! Look at that! Aren't all the teachers PROUD!!! Blargh. Failure teachers produce failure students.

I am not against sex education, but it is the job of the parents not the schools. I did NOT say it was a waste of time, just that the schools shouldn't be the ones doing it.

I'd say that if they'd been taught to use condoms in school they might have served the war effort a little better.

If they had been taught to keep their pants on by their parents, they might have served the war effort a little better.

Currently there are antibiotic resistant strains of these diseases that are becoming more prevalent

There are antibiotic resistant strains because WAY too many didn't keep their pants on and caught them. Use of antibiotics leads to resistant strains of whatever bacterial disease it is. The more common the disease, the faster the resistant strains develop.

Worldwide 1,700,000 die of aids every year. Countries with the lowest rates of aids infection are the ones that have been teaching children how to use condoms.

AIDS has multiple transmission vectors. However, the main one is as an STD. Keeping one's pants on will eliminate that vector.

For anyone to say that learning about safe sex is a waste of time in this day and age is a sign of such profound ignorance that no wonder the world is heading for collapse.

It is the BIG LIE of Liberalism/Progressivism that if someone does not want the Government (in this case, the public school system) doing something, they do not want it done at all.

Is the objective here the elimination of STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy? If so, then condom use is not the way to go. The ONLY way to reliably prevent STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is NO sex AT ALL outside of a committed, monogamous, lifelong relationship.

The Liberals/Progressives throw band-aid ineffective solutions at various 'problems', pretending that they are helping the people with those problems. They do not WANT to actually solve those problems because doing so would deprive them of money, political power, and influence. They just want to present the appearance of doing so in order to keep people voting for them.

Don't act all righteously indignant here. You do not have the moral high ground.

If you wish to persist in this behavior, go Potter-Stewart yourself.

Your statistics are incorrect. Anyone who'd had a decent sex ed class would know that. Anyone who had a decent sex education would know that aids has been passed on despite people thinking they were being monogamous. It just takes one partner to cheat. Do you know what some people who haven't had sex education in these countries believe? They think that having sex with a virgin will cure you of aids. Crazy huh? Is that the sort of information you want people to have? Or would you rather they had sex education and were taught the truth?

I am righteously indignant here. I am disgusted. Anyone who lives in a cloud cuckoo land preaching the utter nonsense of abstinence is not only dangerous, but immoral. I am absolutely horrified to hear it discussed as a reasonable method of contraception. Such puritanical nonsense has no place in the modern world. Sex is a natural part of life and all this shaming people rather than dealing with the reality is backwards.

The reality is people have sex. Pretty much everyone does it. The reality is that teenagers will do it with or without your permission (more likely without and in dangerous ways if they can't talk openly and frankly to a parent or teacher about the risks). The reality is that the best way to deliver actual correct sex education is through a school where correct information can be passed on. Its a fantasy that people will "just keep it in their pants". Not to mention that if people don't even know what sex is (because they have been deprived of sex education) they can't "keep it in their pants" because even that stupid phrase implies a certain level of knowledge about sex.

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Reality Internet Personality

I am not against sex education, but it is the job of the parents not the schools. I did NOT say it was a waste of time, just that the schools shouldn't be the ones doing it.

Quite correct, ideally it SHOULD be the parents doing it, but when these days, most seem to abdicate from that responsibility, then it IS unfortunately left up to the schools to try to fill the gap.

OK folks, this is getting a bit bad tempered. ES99 is getting a bit of a bashing here which she doesn't fully deserve. She is quite capable of defending herself, and will do, but that isn't the point. Can we all calm down please.

Sorry about dishing the nasty out when it got dealt to me. I have been out of sorts of late. I am sorry about offending people.

I think I will take a break from this topic and likely the entire politics forum for a while. Have fun.