William Bruneau

This unprecedented American introduction to bidet use is a self-published paperback composed and periodically updated by Bill Bruneau. Bill is a self-educated home ecologist based in Northern Californian. He was horrified to discover that Americans tend to know little or nothing about modes of intimate cleansing people elsewhere in the world believe essential. So he made himself an expert on bidets and then wrote and self-published this unique little booklet about the benefits of equipping one's bathroom with some kind of device for intimate washing -- anything from a traditional European-style bowl bidet to a mobile sprayer attachment.

In this periodically revised and updated introduction to tools and techniques designed for intimate washing Bill Bruneau chronicles the self-learning that transformed him into an unprecedented American missionary. Initially his mission was to track down, compare notes with, and learn from the growing number of American bidet manufacturers. His text includes recommendations made by practicing M.D.s who have made business sidelines out of making and selling devices to facilitate intimate washing. It also quotes instructive comments and correspondence from pleased beneficiaries.

The result of Bill's cutting-edge medico-ethnographic research is an unprecedented American guide to the history, current status, and contemporary usage of a whole range of modern appliances designed for intimate washing. The M.D.s among his informants -- some of the leading American manufacturers of this unsual appliance remain practicing healthcare providers -- supplied him with short, quotable rundowns about the benefits of habitually using them: No more hemorrhoids. Fewer sex-related rashes, odors, and irritations. Eluded sexually transmitted infections. This little paperback also emphasizes the pleasantness that habitual intimate washers attribute to their conscientious personal hygiene.

Not even the medically credentialed informants quoted in this text say anything specific about reduced risks of getting sexually transmitted infections thanks to bidet-facilitated post-sex washing. In the USA, liability laws and responsiblity fears keep M.D.s and their minions from making public assertions about preventive effectiveness in the absence of scientific articles published in respectable professional journals and hence citable in footnotes equated with the only kinds of empirical evidence deemed respectable by credentialed healthcare professionals. None but medical researchers who order up, fund, and conduct such scientific studies are permitted to make health-related recommendations deemed worthy of reported public pronouncements and mainstream publicity. Hence the persisting "conspiracy of silence" that keeps the vast majority of Americans from knowing much of anything about a technique for preventing sexually transmitted infections that has been conventional wisdom elsewhere in the world for millennia.

After surveying the long history and widespread use of bidets for health-protecting and cosmetic purposes on other continents, Bill Bruneau suggests that traditional toilet-bowl-style bidets are rapidly giving way to simpler, more versatile, and more accessible offspring. Chief among them are vegetable sprayers intended for kitchen sinks, easily purchased at hardward stores, which are attached instead to water pipes on the backs of toilet bowls or in nearby bath tubs and shower stalls.

Bill himself refrains from asserting that completing a sexual engagement by washing involved body parts is a way to protect oneself from sexually transmitted infections. But he implies that post-sex washing contributes to such prevention.

If you know how to track down medical journal articles via the Internet, you can consult the handful of respectably published scientific articles that have associated post-sex washing facilitated by simple bowls or tubs of water with the prevention of HIV infections. One of the earliest endorsements of this hygiene approach was produced in the early 1990s by a British medical researcher affiliated with the London School of Health and Hygiene. See Nigel O'Farrell's "Soap and Water Prophylaxis for Limiting Genital Ulcer Disease and HIV 1 Infection in Men in Sub-Saharan Africa," which appears in "Genitourinary Medicine: The Journal of Sexual Health, STDS, & HIV." Vol 69, No 4, August 1993, pp. 297-300. Subsequent scientific studies that attest to the effectiveness of post-sex washing vis-a-vis HIV infections were undertaken in South Africa by teams overseen by O'Farrell and his associates.

The only contemporary field study of sex-related washing vis-a-vis sexually transmitted infections including HIV infections to be conducted in the USA was undertaken with the help of five big-city STD Clinics funded and overseen by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early 1990s. Its overseers and local affiliates ignored longstanding military practice and private practitioner recommendations by presuming to discourage STD Clinic patrons from washing after sex by insisting that it would do nothing to keep them from getting sexually transmitted infections. Their goal was to persuade insistent post-sex washers to rely on condom use instead. Yet the principal investigators and clinicians who oversaw and conducted this study ended up both failing to dissuade STD Clinic-study participants to refrain from washing after sex and failing to demonstrate that these insistent post-sex washers would inevitably come down with sexually transmitted infections. Very few of them did.
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Nevertheless, five years after this study was completed, even though its findings contradicted its hypothesis that post-sex washing did nothing to prevent STDs, ie principal investigators of this CDC-funded, five-locality study managed to get an article about its findings published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. See Richard A. Crosby, Caniel Newman, Mary L. Kamb, Jonathan Zenilman, John M. Douglas, Jr., Michael Iatesta, for the Project Respect Group. "Misconceptions About STD-Protective Behavior." "American Journal of Preventive Medicine." 2000:19 (3), pp. 167-173.

The most reputable African study to statistically confirm that post-sex washing could reduce the risk of HIV infections in poor sexually active Kenyan men is reported on in the following article: 'Amelia S. Meier, Elizabeth A. Bakusi, Craig R. Cohen, King K. Holmes. "Independent Association of Hygiene, Socioeconomic Status, and Circumcision with Reduced Risk of HIV Infection Among Kenyan Men." Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes" 2006, Sept:43 (1): 117-118.

The most reputable study to show that humble, bowl-facilitated post-sex washing reduces sexually transmitted infections among women: 'Barbara D. Reed, Kathleen Ford, Dews N.Wirawan. "The Bali STD/AIDS Study: Association between Vaginal Practices and STDS among Sex Workers." "Sexually Transmitted Infections." 2001:77:46-52.… (altro)