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I know we haven't exactly addressed this issue in class, but it's been in the news so much lately that I feel compelled to bring it up. There's been a fantastic (in my opinion) new study that basically compared the age in which students who had abstinence-only education first had sex to the age students who had contraception-friendly sex education first had sex. Surprisingly (to some), there was no age difference in these groups (14.9 was the average age of losing virginity).

While conservative politicians are calling for people not to make "sweeping generalizations" based on this study, it's pretty clear that any attempt to indoctrinate people against a basic human instinct has very little contructive impact. Even when powerful institutions such as religion and morality come into play, the trend seems to be that people end up having sex before marriage no matter what.

That being said, what does this mean for any attempt to reform human nature? Is the brain really capable of change without drugs (ie antidepressants) to induce this change? How much will power do we really have?