June 2006 Archives

I was reading the news instead, and I came across an article titled, "Condoms proven to protect against virus." Of course, we're talking about HPV. With this new vaccine, and because I was just talking about condoms and HPV earlier this week, I was curious.

Readers are greeted with this lovely graphic:

It makes me feel sooo good! Look how few have infections when their partner used condoms 100% of the time.

And, look! Look at the second paragraph of the article:
"A three-year study of female college students — all virgins at the start — found that women whose partners always wore a condom during sex were 70 percent less likely to become infected with the human papilloma virus, or HPV, than those whose partners used protection less than 5 percent of the time."

And the article continues to to have Drs. and Researchers and the U of Washington and the New England Journal of Medicine talking about how great, great, Great this is for woman-kind.

And then this little line farts all over how great this is supposed to be:
"Twelve of the 42 women who said their partners always used condoms became infected. " That's 28.5% (!?!?)

Let's go back. Look at the graphic. It soothes. It reassures.

Wait, no. We're not looking at percentages. We're looking at incidences. The number of women in each group. We have no clue how large the groups are. The rates of infection, to be realistic, could very well be the same. Or, and I really digress here, the differences could be statistically insignificant. Especially if the groups are drastically different in size. The pretty graphic is fluff, and so is the article, to the best of our knowledge. Condoms, when used 100% of the time by a partner, still result in almost 30% of women (who started the study of only 3 years as virgins) becoming infected with HPV. The article includes excuses, if you're interested, but I'm peeved about the fluff reporting and the fluff graphic and the wet fluff that my excitement and my naive hope has become.

On a side note, did anyone else notice that only 82 women participated in the study and there were 122 - One HUNDRED and twenty-two - HPV infections? Will someone explain how we should be happy that these women were evidentially RE-Infected in a scant 3 years, with condom use? (?!?!?)

I just deleted the original post. This will be inferior, automatically. I'm discouraged - don't you hate it when this happens? I'm not going to include the bit about violin, so for the sake of justifying looking up his name: Mendelssohn.

OK. Today was my first real day of my new job. I have an old job, where I still reign Queen Supreme of the Copy Machine, but now, I have a second one. one that does more than pay the gas bill. For my new job, I'm working at the Juvenile Detention Center, administering a part of the intake interview. This is challenging because the youths there are very, very candid. To be specific, it is emotionally taxing and I can feel the burden. But, this job is exciting for me because it is a step towards my future career goals in several ways. Outside of the resume boost, I'm doing things and working with people that I will be likely to work with as a part of my career. Very interesting.

Outside of that, class is going well. I have a small collection of Latin terms that I can correctly apply to plants - no useful information yet, and I've a solid A. Violin is going well, as is my original job. I'm starting work for my senior thesis, which is insanely exciting. It looks like I'll be doing my own data collection, probably with the JDC youths that I'm working with now. :) This is just a straight up ramble, I have no moral to my story, and I have no witty line with which I can end it. Oh well. Enjoy your summer days - they're lovely here.

OK, conclusion:
Today, for botany class, we all stopped for a moment to talk about leaf variation and eat fresh, wild mulberries. Juicy and tart, they made me very anxious to get to pie-making. :)