This is not about sex.

It's really not. Ok, sex is part of the story, but it is used to illustrate a larger story. I just didn't think it was right to put sex in the title in an attempt to lure people into this post ;-)

My paper is the Regina Leader-Post, part of the CanWest cabal. It ran a pair of stories ( one & two ), by the same author, in this Saturday's edition. The stories covered the bottom half a page. On the top half of the page was a large line drawing of a man looking decidedly distressed, holding a pencil. The pencil wasn't normal. It had a large curve downward to it.

I didn't connect the line drawing to the subject of my post until this evening when I started writing. Funny how the mind works.

The topics of both stories is stress and if sex can play a role in the reduction of stress. The stories ramble about and do not give a definitive answer. I learned nothing new about stress and was struck that they were a poorly written
attempt to show that there is two sides to the coin.

Quoted in one story is 'Dr. Robin Milhausen, a sex expert from the University of Guelph [and] the former co-host of the Life Network show Sex, Toys & Chocolate'. Quote - "sex is an excellent antidote for stress" Also quoted is 'Sandra Byers, a sex therapist and head of the department of psychology at the University of New Brunswick'. Quote -"Using sex to relieve stress is not generally a good idea".

I have to set up another aspect of my point. The page with the two stories and the line drawing was adjacent to the daily funnies. The page adjacent to the funnies gets a certain demographic of readers. One of those demographics is young men. How do I know ? Growing up the funnies was the only reason I read the paper. It carried over into adulthood as I slowly expanded to read the rest of the paper. But I always read the funnies.

The part got my spidey sense tingling was this bit:

Dr. Chris Van Vuuren of Jasper Avenue Medical Clinic in Edmonton says he sees younger men regularly who are experiencing erectile dysfunction due to stress or relationship problems. "I prescribe Viagra, Levitra or Cialis as confidence boosters, and after a while they usually don't need it," says Van Vuuren,

Does it sound like a targeted advertisement to you ?

Erectile dysfunction is far and away a condition in older men ( " ... just 5 percent of men with erectile problems were between the ages of 20 and 40 ). Occasional problems do not need a pill, usually a little less alcohol solves the problem.

My contention is that the paper and the journalist are shilling for the pill industry. I know it is not a new thing but it just seems to be getting a little more blatant. On the other hand I might be getting more cynical as time goes on.

I thought that the idea of treating erectile dysfunction for a while and then discontinuing treatment because normal function had returned was just bullshit.
Apparently I was wrong.

After a year, the men were taken off Viagra, and the researchers found 59 percent of those who had taken Viagra nightly had normal erectile function after discontinuing the drug. In addition, 95 percent of these men continued normal function during six months of follow-up.

Or, perhaps I was not wrong, the problem went away because it was not a condition that needed treatment in the first place because it was only occasional.

Certainly the bulk of the articles were not about ED and maybe I am reading to much into them and their placement in the paper. One of the article first appeared in the Edmonton Journal in December. I can't tell when the other one first appeared. Did they surface in my paper this week because there hasn't been enough sales of boner pills in Saskatchewan in the last quarter ?