The National Institutes of Health released a study saying that condoms protect men and women from AIDS and men from Gonnorhea; however, there is not enough evidence to say that they protect against any other sexually transmitted diseases.
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Think that using condoms makes it "safe" to have sex? Think again!

There is a lot of debate going on as to whether or not condoms offer any protection against HPV. Most internet websites will tell you to "protect yourself against HPV by using condoms," and your doctor probably echoes the phrase himself. But do condoms really work against this virus?

The answer that most HPV-experienced individuals will tell you is NO. In fact, many people have used condoms faithfully and still gotten HPV. One professional study done with partners of whom one was infected with HPV and the other wasn't showed that using a condom only reduced the infection rate by around 5%. But why don't condoms help?

There are 3 reasons why condoms don't help. First of all, they can break, and do 12% of the time. (That means out of 100 people who have sex with a condom, it will break on 12 people!!! Do you know how many people this winds up being, in the whole world?) Second, they slip around, allowing a fluid exchange between partners (even if it's not actually semen), and HPV can be carried through fluid. But those aren't the biggest reasons. The biggest reason that condoms do not protect against HPV is that HPV is spread mainly through skin-to-skin contact, and people are usually infected with HPV in the places the condom doesn't cover! Therefore, they are practically useless when it comes to HPV.

No one can expect to use condoms and NOT contract HPV from an infected partner, even though the longer a person goes without having an outbreak (warts/dysplasia), the more likely it is that they will not be contagious. The probability that you will still get it, condom or not, is pretty great, especially if your partner has recently had symptoms or has them now. And even if you have sex and show no signs of it years later, you can't say "Ha! I didn't catch it" because most people with HPV never show signs anyway (you'd just be in the majority, that's all).

Am I a horrible person now? Am I trying to tell you that you can only have sex with someone who is infected, too? Am I destroying your social and sexual life?!?!?! AM I TELLING YOU YOU CAN NEVER HAVE SEX AGAIN?!?!?! No, silly. I am simply trying to make you think and be smart before you have sex.

I do not condone sex outside of marriage, for a multitude of reasons. (For more about this, read the bottom of my Dealing with HPV page.) However, the decision is yours to make for yourself, and I believe that facts speak louder than any sermon. So these are the facts. It's up to you to decide whether, under these circumstances, you'd like to practice casual sex.

So why do we keep hearing about "safe sex"? It's because we're brainwashed into thinking that if we use a condom, everything will be okay! I actually just heard a very good radio broadcast about this topic. I was listening to a Christian radio station and they had a program by a speaker named Josh McDowell entitled "The Safe Sex Lie." He explained how the general public is very ignorant about STD's on the whole, and willingly accepts the lie they are fed that using a condom will prevent anything bad from happening. In reality, most people who have sex outside of marriage will contract an STD. Even those who are unfortunate enough to marry someone who has had sex outside of marriage sometimes suffer (I have answered many emails on this topic.) I was so happy that someone is finally airing a public broadcast focused towards HPV! If you would like to get a recording of the show, you can go to www.josh.org and download the file for free. He wrote a book on the same topic, entitled "Why True Love Waits."