Abstract

Safer Sex or Partner Selection? The New AIDS Dilemma By Edward E. Bartlett, Ph.D. educators and counselors have long had to confront time shortages, inadequate administrative support, and an emotionally taxing caseload. Fortunately, one aspect of their work always seemed to rest on solid ground: the notion that "safer sex" was the best means to reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV. Now, a recent analysis by two epidemiologists is calling even that assumption into question. to HIV them routinely into heterosexual and homosexual intercourse. Health care professionals need to advise their patients in detail about how to use condoms" (p. 69). Other governmental publications, such as the Surgeon General's Report on AIDS, have taken this line of reasoning further in recommending lifelong monogamy or even abstinence. And to feminists, troubled over the fact that responsibility for most forms of birth control rested on the woman, the prospect of widespread use of condoms seemed to offer a certain poetic justice. promote a willingness to incorporate Partner Selection: Safer Sex: Tried, But True? When it became increasingly clear in the early 1980s that AIDS was associated with sexual contact, the prevention recommendations that emerged were based on the