Swallowing pig sperm: A miracle cure?
Oct. 26, 1999

Will semen spurting out of a hog's penis provide the next wonder drug for humanity?

Lusty sows might regard swine spunk as sexy, and Nebraska pig-ranchers accept it as a procreating necessity, but ordinary humans undoubtedly view oinker jism as a repulsive fluid they'd rather not think about.

Pig sperm doesn't bore Canadian researchers, however. Frances Pothier and his Department of Animal Sciences colleagues at Quebec's Laval University are presently attempting to transform hog wads into an array of growth hormone (GH) pharmaceutical products, notes the November issue of Nature Biotechnology.

"We will introduce a new human gene into the pig embryo at the one-cell stage, with micro-manipulation," Pothier explained to Salon Urge in a phone interview. "We can introduce any genes that we want: genes that combat hemophilia, genetic lung disease and cystic fibrosis, for example. We can also introduce genes that act as 'red blood cell boosters' -- this product will help patients recover from chemotherapy."

Geneticists are already producing pharmaceutical proteins in the mammary glands of goats, sheep and cows, but Pothier believes pig testicles provide a cheaper, faster medical factory. "The gestation period of the pig is only three months, three weeks and three days," he said. "And in six months, the pig starts ejaculating. In one year [with a pig] you will have the product; with a cow you have to wait two and a half years."

Hogs, moreover, are prolific splashers: they expel about a cup of sperm with each ejaculation. Harvesting piggy ooze is also simple. "Pigs can be trained to mount a special bench every day, and ejaculate inside it," said Pothier. "The process takes only 10 to 20 minutes."

Future patients who fear they might receive prescriptions that require them to swallow spoonfuls of hog semen daily need not worry. The boar-juice, Pothier assures us, "will be purified in very complex procedures."

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Sexpert Bright sues Virginia!
Oct. 25, 1999

Virginia, do you want your children to be "virgins" forever? Is that why you're screwing the Bill of Rights? To "protect" them?

Cyberspace doesn't care how old the finger on the mouse is, but presumably Old Dominion does. So on April 7, the General Assembly of this Southern state passed a porn-paranoid law to criminalize any "knowing" display on the Internet of commercial material deemed "harmful to juveniles." The new state law targets Virginia-based Internet sites. They could be taken to court or banned for all kinds of illicit content. The murkily defined but explicitly sex-censorious measure took effect July 1.

Although three other states (New Mexico, Michigan and New York) passed smut-scared regulations that criminalized Internet content, the federal courts found the laws unconstitutional. Now Virginia's effort to establish itself as a Christian fundamentalist "family values" oasis is also being contested. On Oct. 6, 16 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria against the new measure, claiming it violates the First Amendment and the commerce clause of the Constitution.

Since then the coalition of free-speech advocates, sexperts, media companies, authors, nonprofit groups and bookstores has rallied together to fight the anti-cybersex law. Along with author Harlan Ellison, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and A Different Light Bookstores and others, Salon columnist and sex writer Susie Bright has recently joined the battle. Since announcing her participation last week, she says, she has "heard from a lot of people who are thrilled to have someone take this nonsense on."

What exactly is the Virginia legislature getting its panties in a twist about? Is it cyber-savvy teens who accidentally surf across safe-sex info or discover whole online bookstores of gay literature? Critics say the bill is dangerously broad and could prohibit the transmission of important information for youth. One of the plaintiffs, People For the American Way, a nonprofit dedicated to free speech, has decried the bill as banning "valuable communications, such as business transactions and the dissemination of health information."

Poor Virginia! Her personality is so erratic! While the AOL-headquarters state waves in Internet investors with one friendly hand, the other repressive paw frantically pushes them out.

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The changing fates of working girls
Oct. 22, 1999

Though widely called the world's oldest profession, prostitution has always been subject to a particularly capricious fate. In some societies -- from Nevada to ancient Babylonia -- it has enjoyed official sanction; in others it persists despite government and religious condemnation. Even now, there is no end in sight for the debate surrounding the danger and value of trading sex for money. Just this week one government moved to embrace "working women," while 5,000 miles away citizens in another country attacked the skin commerce.

Germany's leftist coalition of Social Democrats and Greens is currently hustling for hookers' rights, claims an article in the Los Angeles Times this week. Families Minister Christine Bergmann wants health insurance and social security benefits extended to flesh-trading frauleins, and 68 percent of the population agrees. If passed, Germany's laws would parallel measures in the Netherlands, Europe's most tolerant nooky-bartering nation.

Is this about liberated sexuality or liberating cash flow? The weekly magazine Stern reports that 1.2 million German men pay for sex daily; this adds up to an engorged total of $7 billion annually! If brothels were legalized and taxed (a revenue-swelling proposal seductively offered by Bergmann), German "johns" would squirt millions of deutsche mark into the coffers of their cash-strapped government.

In Zambia, ladies of the night stroll a darker street, although they too are seen as having a deep impact on their economy. This week a news commentary in Times of Zambia (Lusaka) raged against the capital's hordes of sex workers who lift their skirts to flash their naked wares at cruising automobiles. Many prostitutes service their carnal customers in public view on the street. The fuming article climaxes in a drive-by pun: "Zambia must step on the gas to avert prostitution ... Its curse has devastating consequences on the nation."

The primary "curse" of Zambian street-walking isn't anything as benign as perceived immorality. Last month the British Medical Journal reported that 65 percent of the current Zambian medical patients are suffering with HIV or AIDS, which has reduced overall life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 64 years to 47 years. The under-funded hospital system is on the verge of collapse, too poor to even purchase basic drugs.

German whores can profit their state, but in Zambia, they're part of a plague that is crippling the country -- both financially and socially. When it comes to a society's view of hookers, context is everything. - - - - - - - - - - - -

The unbearable unhorniness of hermits
October 21, 1999

Not all men are eager for intercourse. Some bashful blokes will hide themselves away for decades to escape intimacy.

Just ask Reuss Johann.

Known as the naked "Hermit of the Bush," he ran wild for 16 years dining on raw road kill kangaroo in Australia's Northern Territories. According to an article in the Mirror Wednesday, startled cops captured the long-bearded loner 18 months ago. Not knowing quite what to do with the self-made bushman, they penned him in a Brisbane correctional institute, awaiting proof of his identification. The neo-primitive prisoner claims he is a 61-year-old Luxembourg citizen with an outdated visitor's visa.

What was he running from? In addition to immigration officers, could the man have been avoiding unwanted female advances? The disheveled celibate confessed to officers that he had "had no contact with a woman" for years. Instead, he lusts after another kind of flesh -- the raw meat he once found in the wide open outback. His lawyer, who expressed concerns about his health, is campaigning for his freedom.

Is an aversion to romance one of the things that drives men to become hermits?

Robert Sinclair would probably agree. He might also say it was a necessarily drastic measure. After surviving 23 years in the Scotland highlands, the 51-year-old hermit has suddenly found himself the love object of several eager maidens.

He had subsisted on potatoes, tins of salmon, soft drinks, bananas and other sustenance snitched from isolated farmhouses until last November, when helicopters and patrolmen on horseback flushed him out of his hideaway, reported the London Independent yesterday. But before sentencing was complete, he high-tailed it to the hills again, only to be recaptured last month.

The hermit was released from Barlinnie Prison this week, with one year's probation, reported the Scotsman. But freedom may not mean peace. According to his friend Willie Leitch, Sinclair received "a number of letters from lassies proposing marriage." - - - - - - - - - - - -

Gwyneth's hunks get stripped
Oct. 20, 1999

What has Gwyneth Paltrow seen that women want a glimpse of? Hmm ... an Oscar, with her name on the envelope? No. A petite, pert proboscis in the mirror? Oodles of dough in the bank? Guess again. If a recent survey on Cosmopolitan gives any indication, it's Gwyneth's private life that has women most curious. After all, she's burrowed into the briefs of our era's most hungered-after hunks.

Cosmo's current "Undress Your Date" interactive game invites carnally-curious women to "unclothe" helpless virtual men. Hand-shaped icons -- steered lasciviously by your mouse -- allow you to passionately paw the garments off a gallery of glamorous cyber guys.

Yesterday, the lusty-lady mag tallied up the 13,000 disrobings the irresistible males received. Who's got the bod women really want to see in the buff? Ben Affleck, Gwyneth's recent beau, came in first. Brad Pitt, her former fiance, was a close runner up. (Although Cosmopolitan doesn't list the losers, Business Wire Inc. reported this detail.)

The pair of ex-Paltrow paramours were culled from a pool of Hollywood studs she's presumably never slept with: George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Brendan Fraser, Will Smith, Leonardo di Caprio, Taye Diggs, Ricky Martin and Joseph Fiennes. (At least Fiennes gently mauled her in "Shakespeare In Love.")

Gwyneth's virtual ex-bedmates aren't available online anymore. Instead, Cosmo has replaced them with "occupational" dates: a businessman, a cowboy, an artist, a frat boy and a red-hot fireman who is getting his "rubbers" rapidly removed by inflamed women who need hosing off.

- - - - - - - - - - - - Use a pill, go to jail
October 18, 1999, 9:00 p.m.

Is Malaysia competing with the United States as the new capital for sexual scandal? If its stringent sex laws continue to be enforced, there are sure to be plenty of scandals -- sex or no sex. Such was the unfortunate fate of two middle-aged, unmarried Malaysians who found their sexy rendezvous nipped in the bud when vice officers of the state's Islamic Affairs Department raided their Malacca hotel room Friday.

Only a sarong and a towel sheltered the respective private parts of the 42-year-old woman and her 60-year-old male paramour, reported the national Bernama news agency. This informal apparel seemed suspicious to the Muslim police, who then inspected the chamber for additional clues. Potent proof was quickly obtained when the vice officers discovered an opened packet of the male erection drug Viagra. More incriminating yet, of the four-pill packet, only two pills remained. Were the absent two swallowed to induce sinful virility?

The Islamic court system immediately charged the coitally interrupted couple with two serious sexual offenses. "Khalwat," the crime of "being in close proximity," carries up to two years in jail or a fine of 3,000 ringgit, which is approximately $790 U.S. "Attempted illicit sex," the second charge, applies to any unconsummated intercourse between Malaysian couples not married to each other. This crime of passion commands an even stiffer penalty: up to three years in jail or 5,000 ringgit. The judge has ordered the unrequited elders to remain in custody until sentencing this Wednesday.

While those unknown lovers languish in jail, the sex scandal surrounding one of Malaysia's most famous leaders continues its sorry saga. The High Court is due to announce its decision on whether to reopen the trial of Anwar Ibrahim. Last year the charismatic political rival of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad was sentenced to six years in prison for allegedly sodomizing his wife's former driver in 1993. He has remained in custody ever since.

Most international observers regard the evidence against Anwar as an absurd fabrication, drummed up by cliques supporting the nation's tyrannical ruler, but to date such international disapproval has not helped Ibrahim and it probably won't help a couple of unnamed lovers sampling Viagra.

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