Posted on: Sunday, January 30, 2005

Study of sex behavior is far from complete

By Marilyn Elias
USA Today

"I think Kinsey would be just so disheartened at how little we still know about sex and how much fear there still is," says Jennifer Bass, head of information services at the Kinsey Institute.

For starters, with adults living so much longer, we need a lot more research on what leads to sexual satisfaction in marriage, says sex therapist Judith Seifer. "Some couples manage to keep the flame going. How?" she asks.

As 77 million baby boomers head into old age and take more medications, scientists also need to learn more about how drugs, and taking several of them, affect sexual function. Some studies have been done in men, "but we're about 15 or 20 years behind in our studies with women," she says.

Adult-onset diabetes is more common with age, and women with the disease are vulnerable to pelvic nerve damage that can hinder sexual pleasure. "Much more needs to be done to develop treatments for this," Seifer says.

Researchers also need to figure out how to stop the rising incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. The Kinsey Institute has studies under way on how mood and emotions affect sexual risk-taking, and has developed a questionnaire that may identify young adults prone to risky behavior. The goal: prevention.

"A key question is, what do we need to do to persuade people to have safe sex — how are we going to get their attention?" Seifer says.

And we don't know much about the psychology of libido. "What turns people on? That's pretty basic, but we just don't know," says Leonore Tiefer, a sex therapist and adjunct professor at New York University.