Daily Rounds: Sex At Harvard; The Cost Of AIDS Prevention; Tuna Scrape The New Pink Slime; And More

On Campus, Opening Up Conversations About Sex (The New York Times) — "It was Sex Week at Harvard, a student-run program of lectures, panel discussions and blush-inducing conversations about all things sexual. The event was Harvard’s first, though the tradition started at Yale in 2002 and has since spread to colleges around the country: Brown, Northeastern, the University of Kentucky, Indiana University and Washington University have all held some version of Sex Week in recent years. Despite the busy national debate over contraception and financing for reproductive health, Sex Week at Harvard (and elsewhere) has veered away from politics, emerging instead as a response to concern among students that classroom lessons in sexuality — whether in junior high school or beyond — fall short of preparing them for the experience itself. Organizers of these events say that college students today face a confusing reality: At a time when sexuality is more baldly and blatantly on display, young people are, paradoxically, having less sex than in generations past, surveys indicate. “I think there’s this hook-up culture at Harvard where people assume that everyone’s having sex all the time, and that’s not necessarily true,” said Suzanna Bobadilla, a 21-year-old junior."

Using AIDS Drugs To Prevent Infection: A Bargain? (Reuters) — "Giving an AIDS-fighting drug to men who are at high risk of HIV infection would cost billions, but it might be worth it terms of reducing infection rates, U.S. researchers said on Monday. Since 2010, when a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that giving a daily dose of Gilead Sciences' Truvada to men who have sex with men can reduce HIV infection rates by 44 percent, researchers have been trying to work out how to make this treatment approach financially feasible. Gilead is seeking permission for Truvada — a combination of its HIV drugs Emtriva, also known as emtricitabine, and Viread, or tenofovir — to be used as a form of "pre-exposure prophylaxis," often shortened to PrEP."

Is Tuna Scrape The Pink Slime Of Sushi? (NPR) — "According to the Food and Drug Administration's recall notice, tuna scrape is "tuna backmeat, which is specifically scraped off from the bones, and looks like a ground product." In other words, tuna hamburger. The product, Nakaochi Scrape, was sold frozen to restaurants and supermarkets, which used it to make sushi, particularly spicy tuna rolls. Of the 116 people in 20 states and the District of Columbia who have fallen ill so far, many reported they had eaten spicy tuna rolls. The distributor has recalled 58,828 pounds of the stuff."

Mass. Faulted On Child Abuse Reporting (The Boston Globe) — "A nationwide survey to be released Tuesday that ranks how states report the deaths and near-deaths of children because of abuse and neglect gave Massachusetts a letter grade of C, reporting the state could do more to make public how the tragedies occurred, a strategy in making sure it does not happen again."