This is HPV. Are you terrified yet??
File this one under "OMFG, for real?!"
From CNN.com:
Study: 1 in 4 Teen Girls Has An STD
A choice tidbit:
The study by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan is an analysis of nationally representative data on 838 girls who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey. Teens were tested for four infections: human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and affected 18 percent of girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4 percent; trichomoniasis, 2.5 percent; and herpes simplex virus, 2 percent.
One more time:
...nationally representative data on 838 girls...
As always, nationally representative data is nationally representative and we have to accept this research for good and bad; but come on, people--what this study actually means is that 25% of 838 girls (for the math-ally challenged, that's 209.5 girls) had an STD. They don't call them "sexually transmitted infections" for nothing. Obviously abstinence isn't hot right now.
I think it's time we stopped freaking out about STIs. With the exception of HIV, they are not deadly and most amount to a treatable, often curable infection that cause symptoms little worse than strep throat or the chicken pox save for the irrefutable evidence they provide that *Gasp!* young people are having sex.
Thanks to L, D, and everyone else who thoughtfully sent this my way.
1 comment:
If you had genital herpes you wouldn't be so ladeefrickindah about it. It sucks. as do genital warts. Maybe they don't kill you but they are uncomfortable and I don't know, do you like dropping your drawers and having someone cut warts offa your privates... I don't. or having to be, uhm, abstinent or really, really, really creative when you have outbreaks so you don't spread it to your partner? and even between outbreaks, genital herpes is still transmissible. So, no, herpes doesn't kill you but it is painful and it's uncomfortable and it can be a difficult thing to deal with socially if you are poly or single and trying to meet new potential lovers. People ain't too understanding about it.
and HPV can cause cancer, that kills too... HIV isn't the only potentially deadly disease out there.
Safer sex practices are vitally important and to be cavalier about it is foolish. You can be totally sex positive without negating the realities of the diseases that are out there. It's not about abstinence it's about education. And taking the opposite stance of the crazy folks who support abstinence only and saying that it's really no big deal and we should stop talking about stis... that's just as patently ignorant. If you've ever been sitting in your gyno's office waiting to learn your fate, waiting to hear the results of that culture, you'd know better.... did you say that you're sexual active?
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