British pharmaceutical bigwig, Lloyd's Pharmacy has created a six degrees of separation-style "calculator" system to determine how many indirect sexual partners you've had. The average Brit's number is 2.8 million.
The calculator system, based on data collected from over 6,000 adults, is being called "sex degrees of separation." Developed to raise awareness about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), the system lets people enter their number of sexual partners and their age ranges, then gives them an estimate of their indirect partners, meaning all the people who've slept with all the people they've slept with.
"When we sleep with someone, we are, in effect, not only sleeping with them, but also their previous partners and their partners' previous partners, and so on," says Clare Kerr, sexual health director of Lloyd's Pharmacy.
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.