[frontline-hepatitis-awareness] Oral Sex Safe and Not Really Sex, Say US Teens

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CDC HIV/STD/TB Prevention News Update

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

UNITED STATES:

" Oral Sex Safe and Not Really Sex, Say US Teens "

Reuters (04.04.05)

A study released Monday found that one in five US teenagers say they

have engaged in oral sex, a practice that some adolescents do not consider

to be sex at all and certainly less risky than intercourse.

Researchers surveyed 580 ethnically diverse adolescents with an average

age of 14.5 and found 20 percent said they had engaged in oral sex, compared

to 14 percent who said they had had sexual intercourse. Another one-third of

the ninth-graders said they intended to have oral sex within the next six

months and almost a quarter said they planned to have intercourse during

that period. While previous studies and numerous campaigns aimed at

deterring teenage sex have focused on intercourse, as many as half of

adolescents experience oral sex first, according to the report.

Adolescents who engage in oral sex rarely use condoms or dental dams,

even though chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis, HIV, and syphilis can

all be orally transmitted, the report noted. Although STD transmission risk

is significantly less with oral sex than with intercourse, teenagers likely

underestimate that risk, it said.

" Given the suggestion that adolescents do not view oral sex as sex and

see oral sex as a way of preserving their virginity while still gaining

intimacy and sexual pleasure, they are likely to interpret sexual health

messages as referring to vaginal sex, " said lead author Bonnie

Halpern-Felsher, a University of California-San Francisco pediatrician.

" Adolescents also believed that oral sex is more acceptable than

vaginal sex for adolescents their own age in both dating and non-dating

situations, oral sex is less of a threat to their values and beliefs, and

more of their peers will have oral sex than vaginal sex in the near future, "

Halpern-Felsher wrote.

The full study, " Oral Versus Vaginal Sex Among Adolescents:

Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behavior, " was published in the journal

Pediatrics (2005;115(4):845-851).