From today’s b, the paper

Shannon Baranoski has a subscription to Cosmopolitan magazine, so monthly her mailbox holds an array of sex tricks and tips. The magazine also covers sexual risks, she said. But the ratio between the tricks and the risks is a bit skewed.

“I think there’s about 10 [tricks] to every 1 [risk],” Baranoski said.

Like others her age, it’s no easy task for Baranoski, 22, a Towson University senior, to get the complete sexual picture. Baranoski often reads about sex and looks up information about diseases and other hazards on the Internet whenever she hears about something. But the consequences aren’t the first thing that comes to her mind.

“I don’t think people think about the consequences unless they are brought up,” she said.

Recently, a report found Baltimore has the second-highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country, beset by rising infection rates among adults in their 20s. A recent study suggested people who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250 percent more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex. And another study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found an STD rate of 25 percent among participating 14- to 19-year-old females, with HPV — human papillomavirus — being the most prevalent (it’s estimated that at least half of sexually active Americans will contract HPV). Of the various kinds of HPV, some can cause cancer, while others cause genital warts.

But such studies are often released simultaneously with reports of the health benefits of sex, everything from suggesting sex helps alleviate headaches and back pain to how the frequency of ejaculation could correlate with prostate cancer rates. Most studies, including those that suggest links between sex and such things as healthier teeth and skin and better sleeping patterns, should be considered purely anecdotal, said Robin Sawyer, an associate professor in the University of Maryland, College Park’s department of public and community health.

What’s more unclear is how sexually active young people process such information.

Terry Hoffman, an OB/GYN at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, said she has received no questions about HPV or oral sex from patients since alarming studies on those subjects were released.

“It amazes me that more women are not aware of HPV,” Hoffman said. “With regard to condoms, there are two types of women — condoms all the time and condoms none of the time, even when there is no other method of birth control.”

Part of the problem may be Americans want to moralize sex as good or bad, said Sawyer, He said there’s something very hypocritical about sex in American culture and that his students rarely concern themselves with alarming STD statistics — unless they can see it.

“I can stand up [in class] and talk about HIV risks among heterosexuals increasing, but what I have to do is bring someone their age, affected, into class,” said Sawyer, who teaches a human sexuality course. “I have to show them. That’s their reality check.”

There are also a growing number of Web sites, like avert.org and thesite.org, devoted to providing information about sex and STDs to young people, but Baranoski said twenty-somethings tend to ignore news about sexual risks.

“If you’re coming into your own [sexually] and maybe still naive and you hear ‘Hey, want to have sex?’ you don’t think ‘Hey, what’s the consequence?’” she said.

Jordan Bartel is assistant editor at b. E-mail him at jordan@bthesite.com

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