Song in my head: Oh when the frogs...come marching out..Oh when the frogs come marching out.....Billmon

Sexual Health for the Alter-Abled

In the midst of all the discouraging news of war and rising gas prices, an article about sexuality for developmentally disabled people was a welcome read a couple of days ago. What a wonderfully progressive attempt to recognize that most humans, regardless of ability, have the right to be sexually active. This snip highlights the sexual training involved. NYT LINK

The six-month curriculum includes birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and abuse. But it also includes masturbation and what the syllabus calls "pleasuring your partner," topics avoided by even the few other agencies experimenting with basic social skills training, often because of parental objections.

I'm Tired And I Can't Get Up

That's me every morning. After 10- 12 hours in bed I wake up feeling fatigued. Every day. I've always needed more sleep that the average person but a very interesting study sheds some light on a possible cause, genetics. Chronic fatigue sufferrers are often looked upon as lazy, unmotivated malingerers. Finding a genetic cause affirms the existence of an illness and maybe even a cure. NEWSDAY LINK

Findings from the largest chronic fatigue study to date reveal that certain clusters of genes underlie the syndrome, which scientists now say is indisputably real. Indeed, it affects about 900,000 people in the United States, a vast proportion of them women, say experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who led the research.