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From: jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: French kissing - safe or unsafe?
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.124202.26280@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 23 Jun 91 19:52:07 GMT
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In article <1991Jun23.021608.3250@cs.ucla.edu> AS.DLH@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU 
(David Hatt 5-0083) writes:
>
>A friend and I had a "disagreement" over whether there is such a
>thing as safe sex with someone who is HIV+.  He said that any sex
>with an HIV+ individual is inherently unsafe.  I disagreed with him.

I'd disagree too.  Phone sex, for example, would be completely and
unquestionably safe.  You may be disagreeing over the definition of "sex".

>I countered that you would take extra steps if a person was
>positive and that he would never know that actual HIV status of a
>person he slept with.

It's probably safe to assume that someone is HIV+ if they tell you they
are.

>We did agree on the dangerously unsafe practices and there was one
>area where we didn't agree:  Assuming no cuts and sores in the
>mouth, is french kissing safe or unsafe?

That's been hotly debated.  I think there were some papers about it at the
conference in Florence.  I think it's reasonable to say that oral
transmission is possible, but highly unlikely.  Gonorrhea and syphillis,
for example, can be transmitted orally, but its not common.  The last I heard, 
there were no reported cases of HIV transmission via oral contact when both
parties had healthy mouths.  There have been some cases of tranmission
through oral sex, but in those cases the recipients had gum problems.

There are lots of safe sex practices that I have no problem with, but
giving up kissing would be really difficult.  It's a good thing that the
risk is so low that it can usually be ignored. 
-- 
Jack Hamilton         jfh@netcom.com         apple!netcom!jfh