I apologize to those who have seen this 3 times already (ally :)), but it's important and a lot of people don't know about it, so:

Nonoxynol-9 (the most commonly used spermicide, these days) is potentially harmful.

Now, it's been known for a while that N-9 can increase the risk of HIV transmission. So I've been wondering why it's still floating around without any warnings - particularly in spermicidally lubricated condoms, which are kind of pointless anyway since the amount of spermicide on them has been found to make no significant difference in terms of pregnancy prevention. Instead, it just irritates and makes it more likely that you'll contract an infection. So, those of you who this applies to - you might want to stop using spermicidally lubricated condoms because they are not providing any significant extra protection anyway, and only use other, more effective spermicides (foams, jellies, strips, etc.) if infection transmission is not an issue for you or if you can find ones that don't contain N-9.

/end public service message