Reuters) -- The consumers group best known for rating cars and washing machines has turned its testing prowess to condoms to find out which ones measure up best and how other birth control methods compare.

The nonprofit Consumers Union says in a new guide to contraception that the seven top types of condom they studied did not burst despite vigorous testing, and all models met international standards.

But results showed that the top brand, able to take the most punishment, was the Durex Extra Sensitive Lubricated Latex, according to the report.

Other top-performers include the Durex Performax Lubricated, Lifestyles Classic Collection Ultra Sensitive Lubricated and TheyFit Lubricated.

A melon-colored model distributed by Planned Parenthood performed the worst, bursting during a test in which the latex condoms were filled with air.

The group says its review of contraceptives was not politically motivated, although there is an intense debate among health professionals and advocacy groups about the focus on abstinence-only education by the Bush administration.

"We plan our testing programs quite a while in advance. This is purely accidental," said senior editor Nancy Metcalf.

Consumers Union uses standardized tests to rate the products it examines, which for latex condoms involves filling them with air. There is no accepted method to test silicon or non-latex condoms.

"You end up with a balloon 3 feet tall and a foot wide. They can really stretch an amazing amount," Metcalf said in a telephone interview.

The New York-based organization, which publishes the Consumer Reports magazine, also tested 16 other contraceptive choices.

"Condoms remain the only family planning and pregnancy prevention method that can help prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, which causes AIDS," the group, which has issued similar reports on condoms periodically since 1979, said in a statement.

"Condoms have improved since the mid-nineties because industry manufacturing standards have become more universally used and more effective," added Edward Kippel, who led the condom test project.

Intrauterine devices or IUDs have also become safer than in previous years, as have birth control pills, including so-called emergency contraception, the group said.

While abstinence has a 0 percent failure rate, doing nothing to prevent pregnancy has an 85 percent failure rate, the group found.

A U.S. government report published last month shows 98 percent of all U.S. women who have had sex have used birth control.

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Now, there's a bunch of politically-motivated bullshit. Abstinence has one of the worst failure rates for preventing pregnancy, because, well abstinence itself has a pretty high failure rate. And people who are taught abstinence-only typically don't resort to other birth-control methods, because they frequently don't know about them, and/or arent' prepared when abstinence fails. IOW, the "85% failure rate" when doing nothing to prevent pregnancy is frequently directly attributable to the abstinence-only crap pushed on the public by self-styled christain moralists who are grabbing more and more power as time goes by.

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On the kinkometer, my kink measures as a sine wave.

Well, I was just gonna try some glib smartass remark about the testing procedures, but that there's a pretty eloquent rant... well said, lizard king

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Plug me into somethin'

If the theory does not conform to the facts, then the facts must be discarded.

No good deed ever goes unpunished

Never argue with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, & beat you with experience.

Great, condoms are heaps stronger now. All they need to do is make them offer some degree of sensitivity for the male using them and maybe we will see a lot more safe sex going on.

gekkogecko,

Perhaps it depends upon the period one selects, but it seems to me that the process of secularization is continuing throughout the Northern hemisphere. Now, if you are referring to the current administration, just be patient, he can’t run again!

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Eudaimonia

Get them fancy ones with tickling fingers all over them...the ones that make your penis look like a porcupine! And turn them inside out.

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Though I am different from you,
We were born involved in one another.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

Complete surrender should not just come at moments in which one faces overwhelming odds, but in the calm when it seems one is personally in complete control of one's life.

I think I've discovered the problem.

According to my Merriam-Webster dictionary, abstinence is defined as "voluntary refraining from eating certain foods or drinking liquor". No wonder it doesn't have a higher success rate! You can be abstinent and still screw. ha ha

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Though I am different from you,
We were born involved in one another.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

Complete surrender should not just come at moments in which one faces overwhelming odds, but in the calm when it seems one is personally in complete control of one's life.

Well, that clears that up, WI. Thank you, even though I almost spit up my lunch rice all over my computer screen.

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On the kinkometer, my kink measures as a sine wave.

Aleluja!

Give the polyeurethane ones a go.. (Like the Durex Avanti)..

They are much thinner than Latex, and they transmit heat well (unlike latex which is a heat insulator).

HuggleZ