This story is interesting but a bit disingenuous. Researchers for The Lancet (the same journal that published the probably too high estimate of the Iraq body count) found that the most promiscuous countries were not necessarily the ones with the highest rates of STD infection. People in Africa, for example, don’t have sex all that much.

However, the researchers put a major qualifier on this: That’s probably because people in developed countries are better at using protection. It doesn’t mean that promiscuity doesn’t cause STD infection; indeed, on the individual level, having multiple sex partners is the only thing that causes STD infection.

The Associated Press, then, is dangerously misleading in the first paragraph of its story when it says “there is no firm link between promiscuity and sexually trasmitted diseases.” There’s an incredibly firm link, it’s just that protection plays into the phenomenon as well — it lets one get away with more random lovin’.

Also, the promiscuity gap isn’t all that dramatic. Three-quarters of folks in developed nations reported recent sexual activity, compared to two-thirds of Africans. (To the AP, though, the difference makes Africans “fairly sexually inactive.”)

Finally, an aside — there are some interesting statistics in the report. In America, average men and women lose their virginity at 16.5 and 17.5; in Indonesia, the numbers are 24.5 and 18.5.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.