College Students on Oral Sex: This Is Science?

The three pages about oral sex that got George Lundberg fired have been published, and they're a bit anticlimactic.

The Journal of the American Medical Association, having fired its editor for allowing an article on whether oral sex is "actually" sex to be published in its (apparently) canonized pages, then went ahead and printed the article anyway in its January 20th issue, which defies sense, but maybe they had promised increased circulation to their advertisers and couldn't back off now. The article tries really hard not to mention President Clinton and the blows he has welcomed and (in another sense) is currently suffering, but "the current public debate" pretty much covers it, unless they're doing a follow-up study to exonerate Richard Gere.

As I have already mentioned, a population of college students was questioned on whether oral sex, and other activites one engages in when one is really fond of the other person or intoxicated beyond caring, count as "having sex." The activites ranged from "deep kissing" to "rounding all the bases"...I mean, the charmingly-put "penile-vaginal intercourse." Not everyone thought oral sex was sex, of course, although it resembles sex to such a degree that the authors of the paper were forced to engage in a brief discussion of "technical virginity" (really), which concept is one of the late 20th century's most charming inventions. The only thing you will be surprised to hear from this survey is that:

• 7 out of 245 (3%) men surveyed thought "deep kissing" was sex; and
• 2 out of 245 (.8%) men surveyed thought "penile-vaginal intercourse" wasn't. So the real result of this survey is that our kids are coming to college with an inadequate preparatory education in areas other than academics as well.

George Lundberg has had major support from his medical journal bretheren, who say that JAMA is "almost as good as the New England Journal of Medicine" so often that I'm thinking of making that JAMA's slogan when I assume editorship. (I e-mailed my last Journal Club to JAMA, and they have not responded, but I am sure I am in the "final round" of candidates, and am waiting for my bribes from jealous MD's to withdraw my candidacy.)

Also, from the actual editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Jerome Kassirer, we have a hilarious editorial which prima facie seems to be supporting Lundberg's right to publish on whatever topic he damn well feels like. In fact, however, Jerome Kassirer then turns to a discussion of things he has published that might have been controversial if anyone had been paying attention to anything Jerome Kassirer says, the subtext of which discussion seems to be "Hey! I'm controversial! Put my picture in 'Newsweek'!"

Of course, if Lundberg hadn't been fired over it, his picture would never have gotten in Newsweek, which is just about two micrometers from making blowjob puns as often as I do. This article is really a very scientific poll about poling, and it's another entry in the sweepstakes our country seems to be running where statistically diverse samplings of the American populace run our highest offices, except for that wacky Southern Baptist prosecutory cabal. I mean, how many times has Newsweek asked the question "Is oral sex sex?" in polls? Certainly more often than JAMA has.

I actually think it would be nice to live in a country run by polls. "It's" and "its" would be declared the same word, Michael Jordan would be President-for-Life, and all ice cream manufacturers would be required to include a couple orlistat capsules with each pint. As was reported elsewhere in the January 20th issue of JAMA, orlistat is a new anti-fat drug which (finally!) actually goes into the intestine and tells it not to soak up any of that nasty fat. The fact that it is not totally efficient, according to a major trial where obese people on orlistat lost 6.5 pounds more per year than other obese people in the same diet program, is totally overshadowed by the fact that it works within about 15 minutes of when you take it. You could take a capsule and then eat that whole cheesecake while absorbing only half of the bad parts! Strategic deployment leads to minimum waistline casualties...a totally American solution to an almost exclusively American problem - we are, of course, the fattest nation in the world.

Of course, the best way to avoid fat absorption is not to eat any. But we've known that for a long time, even longer than JAMA has been around. And anything that simple and that old is highly unlikely to make Newsweek, say 62% of left-leaning Republican housemaids in a recent poll.

And, of course, 100% of Americans have no idea I'm writing anything at all, with a 1% margin of error.

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