I found this very interesting article, and it made me wonder how open everyone would be to the new role providers may be asked to play in sex education.


BANGKOK (Reuters) - Sex workers, tired of being blamed for spreading AIDS, said Thursday they could help fight the deadly disease but were being shunned by governments and agencies.

"We are sex experts. We teach a lot of people, men and women all over the world, how to have sex. If we teach people how to have sex, why don't we teach people how to have safe sex?" Paulo Longo said at an international AIDS meeting in the Thai capital.
The retired Brazilian sex worker, who is now a psychologist, said stigma and discrimination had prevented workers in the world's oldest profession from playing a bigger role in the fight to halt the spread of the sexually transmitted virus.

"They say we are not educated enough, that we are too demanding, that we use drugs all the time so we don't concentrate," said Longo. But given the chance, he and others like him say they could make a difference. "There is evidence that involving sex workers helps a lot," he said. "We can help to minimize the impact of the epidemic". UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV, agrees sex workers should be more involved and equal partners in the consultative process of how to fight the epidemic.