Genitals

Most men with genital piercings don't fit into the usual stereotype of bikers, druggies or Goths, researchers said Monday. In fact, most who responded to a survey are nearly middle-aged, middle class married men, according to an online study performed by researchers from Texas Tech University. Men report many reasons for piercings, including increased sexual satisfaction, a need for rebellion and a desire for risk-taking. But they also endure a variety of complications, particularly infections and bleeding.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. Genital herpes is a common sexually transmitted disease, affecting about 16% of U.S. adults. A lot of people, however, don't have outbreaks of painful blisters and don't know they have the infection. Others know they have herpes but believe they can't transmit it to a sexual partner unless they're experiencing symptoms. A study published Tuesday paints a far more complex portrait of genital herpes, also called herpes simplex virus type 2. researchers conducted one of the largest studies to date of people who test positive for herpes type 2. Some of the participants had occasional symptoms of herpes, and others were always asymptomatic.

Late last month, 330 villages in Senegal held a ceremony to announce that they would end the practice of female genital cutting. That brought the number of Senegalese communities to abandon the practice to 4,229, and when the number reaches 5,000, complete eradication will be achieved. Similar pronunciations and celebrations are occurring in other countries — in Gambia and Somalia, and in Mauritania, where on Tuesday 78 villages participated. The growing movement to end the ancient practice of slicing off part or all of a girl's clitoris and/or labia — historically done to prepare her for adulthood and marriage — is the result of years of work by local and international activists.

A Torrance Superior Court jury ruled Wednesday that the artificial hormone DES was not responsible for causing a man to be born with birth defects so severe that he was thought to be a girl until the age of 14. Jurors deliberated less than two days before reaching an 11-1 verdict in favor of E. R. Squibb & Sons Inc., which manufactured DES until 1968.

For days after he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman during a May 2008 traffic stop, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Mark Fitzpatrick left messages on the woman's home phone in an effort to see her again, according to audio recordings obtained by The Times. "I just want to call and tell you good night," the married sergeant said during a 4:22 a.m. call, made just hours after the alleged assault. "I can't wait to talk to you soon."

Call it an antiviral one-two punch. An HIV-fighting drug has been shown to be even more effective against genital herpes when it's applied as a gel, new research shows. A study released this week by the journal Cell Host & Microbe that tested the gel on women in South Africa (where the risk of HIV and herpes is great) found that the anti-HIV/AIDS drug tenofovir reduced herpes infections by 51% and HIV infections by 39%. In human tissue, the drug inhibits enzymes that the virus needs in order to replicate.

San Bernardino County officials have agreed to pay $25.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that said jailers conducted illegal strip searches, sometimes in front of inmates and deputies of the opposite sex. As many as 160,000 inmates may have been subjected to the searches over three years, attorneys for the plaintiffs said, and each could get several hundred dollars, depending on how many apply for the award.

A former Telfair Elementary teacher pleaded no contest Monday to molesting 13 students at the Pacoima school and faces 25 years to life in prison, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. As a preliminary hearing was to begin for Paul Chapel III, he pleaded no contest to 13 counts of lewd acts on a child, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Elena Abramson. "They were all students at Telfair, aged 8 and 9.... Some of them were students in his class and others he met outside the classroom in breaks or after school," Abramson said.

A federal immigration appeals board in the District of Columbia should grant asylum to a young West African woman who fled Togo to escape the torture of forced genital mutilation, only to be put into a U.S. prison with convicted murderers and thieves. Fauziya Kasinga, now 19, is a victim of persecution and deserves sanctuary.

A vaccine to prevent genital herpes has so far shown mixed results. Although it has proved ineffective in men, the vaccine has reduced transmission and outbreaks in some women whose partners have the disease. Because immunizing even part of the population could slow the herpes epidemic, researchers are forging ahead with additional studies of the vaccine.