Teenage girls and STD's
 

okay.

So it seems as if CNN did a study. The results of which showed that 1:4 teenage girls are packing an STD of some sort. For some reason they havnt done a study of males yet.

I was pretty shocked, and had a flash back to my highschool days.

Talk about a total freak out. I remembered back to a few years ago when my pancreas failed and they ran blood test galore on me. it turns out that I was clean. (Whew!) but then I got to thinking again, what if I did contract some ungodly virus and it just wasn’t detected? Looks like I might be headed for a clinic here soon. Better to know than to be spreading around HPV or something worse.

What about you guys/girls? What are your thoughts on this whole situation?



Article Here

I will supply the obligatory "where were these girls when I was in high school" comment. That's off the list, so we can commence with the discussion.

Honestly, I don't understand why this is surprising. About 25% of females in the US have genital herpes alone, not to mention other STDs. That this study shows 25% of teen females as having any STD means that they have a lower incidence of STD than the general population. Factor in abstinance only education, and I'm surprised the rate is as low as it is.

I didn't get the method used in the study, or any details, being a CNN story I didn't expect anything important like that in there.

From the looks of it, they are talking about being seropositive meaning you have anti-bodies to whatever it was.

For example, secretmethod is close to correct in that about 20% of women tested will show they are seropositive to HSV-2, which is genital herpes. Depending on the study it will go up as high at 30% to lower than 20%, it really doesn't matter that much though.

Of that group though, only something like 2-3% will have ever had an outbreak.

Does that mean that the rest had the infection without showing symptoms? Kinda. What it means is they were exposed to it enough to develop some anti-body reaction but that doesn't mean they 'had' the disease.

I'm willing to bet that these were all seropositive tests without symptoms, which to me, really means nothing. It doesn't mean they can pass on the disease, it doesn't mean they were even exposed sexually, it just means at some point they reacted to it.

I also think there may be a little 'political' motivation to push the HPV vaccine here, which is fine, though I'm still peeved that they limit it to 26 years of age, but thats another topic for another day.

Don't look at me... I didn't do it.

Any statistic that begins with "1 in ..." is fucking worthless. It's a statistical average over a small sample size (100s, maybe 1000 if you're lucky) extrapolated to the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY. And, like Ustwo said, we have no idea how that study itself was even conducted.

God I hate statistics like this.

Did you know that 1 in 4 college women are sexually assaulted?

Or that a sexual assault happens every 3.265 seconds in America?

FUCK YOU, STATISTICS ABUSING NEWS REPORTERS.

has been all over CNN today, so i thought id get opinions.
looks like i got em' :D

Well the only real way for a high school kid to get an STD is to sleep with someone older who has an STD, so maybe these high schoolers should stick to high schoolers? Wouldn't that eventually run out STD's from humans all together.

Well there is always transfer from mother to baby, and rape and assault cases. But those can't factor that high can they?

And I agree with JinnKai, statistics are pretty retarded, and they can be manipulated to show anything they want them to show.

Did you know that 73% of all statistics are made up?

I made it through high school without STD's. Probably because in high school if a girl gets one she's bound to tell a friend and, next thing you know, the entire schools aware.

Rubbers folks. They're a real dick saver.

I think this story is circulating to scare kids into not fucking like a bunch of rabbits.

That's why I didn't get STD's in high school. All my boyfriends were younger.:rolleyes:

My wife told me that teenage girls and young women are all an evil disease, so I can believe this STD story, though the statistical validity of the survey might be questioned ...well, not "might", it actually was questioned by JinnKai.

You know 18 and 19 year olds are still teenagers, right? So all this study basically says is "sometime between 13 and 19, american females start having sex, and are thus eligible for STD's." I like how they phrase it to make it sound like 1 in every 3 of everyone's little 13 year old precious snowflake's friends has hepatitis.

*yawn*

Gah, you beat me to it.

Well, I don't have a problem with that, frankly!!

I blame the liberal media...

For trying to turn this into a story? Me too.

I would have a problem with it if I were in to that age group still lol.

flashback to 10 years ago.

Well hey, if you ask me, it's a better alternative than religion for keeping kids from having unsafe sex. At least this is based on some kind of semi-factual information, instead of beliefs in "purity" and requiring virginity till marriage, etc. I find that approach to be far more insidious than this kind of article.

And personally, I see nothing wrong with scaring the shit out of our future children about the dangers and disasters of sex, long before they're old enough to partake in anything of the sort. I had religion to keep me from even considering it back then, but I'm not relying on that for my own kids. The fear + educational factor works well, I think, to help them make wise(r) decisions than those who get no Sex Talk from the parents, or who are depending on church beliefs to get them through those years.

I'd rather use "respect" than "fear". One must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. One should face one's fear and permit it to pass over one and through one.

Fear leads to the dark side. :orly:

I must repeat that the data is useless without the statistics being shown to back it up, I'd like the N, R, and positive predictive value of all the tests to make a clinical judgement.

As a physician, I must however state that the fact that such a large portion of our population has been exposed is just disturbing. I would not go so far as to say that it's good to scare people with such statistics, however, because I've yet to see a decent study showing that scare tactics of this sort might be effective. If it could be proved effective in lowering the rates of transmission, I would be in favor of it even if the numbers are cooked...

I view this a bit as the 'dark side' of science.

I cut my scientific teeth in environmentalism, and saw the scare tactics there being used. I don't know if you recall the 'if the rainforest's get cut down we will run out of oxygen' one but it was pretty common in the early 90's.

The problem with the lie/exaggeration approach is when its shown to be false it backfires.

Give people the truth and let them make their own calls. Many people are idiots and will make poor choices but thats up to them.

To me there is something fundamentally wrong about using the 'magic' of science to create ones own social engineering project, even if the goal of said project is 'for the common good'.

I prefer proper education over fear mongering :p

yep, we can all see Ghandi spreading STDs amongst the young, can't we?

For the record, this statistic comes from a data analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm It uses data from the 2003-2004 survey.

http://www.cdc.gov/STDConference/200...1march2008.htm

For more information on NHANES look here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/factsheets/nhanes.pdf

It doesn't surprise me a bit that STD rates are rising. Teenage pregnancy rates are up too. We use fear tactics in our schools to teach teens about sex, and this is the end result. Fear, misinformation, and absence of information in regards to sex leads to these problems. Yes, we should share these statistics with teens--but we should do so with context, and with education.

There are still too many teenagers out there who think you can't get an STD via oral sex.


....and what onesnowyowl said.

Dude, props for that one. Big Dune fan here. :thumbsup:

As for my own thoughts on the matter, I believe that fear-mongering and abstinence only education is going/has already caused too many problems. What kids need, and what I needed back when I was younger, was a well-rounded sex education that includes all of the facts laid out objectively. I know too many people who are products of the abstinence only education schools and who view sex as a dirty, immoral activity and who's heads are filled with horrible misinformation.

Oh come on, let's just keep telling teenagers lies regarding sex and that abstinence is the only way to go. Seems to be working great.

I didn't read everything posted in the links but it still appears to just be a blood test they used to ID it in most cases.

Doesn't a VAST majority of the population have herpes simplex A? They're called cold sores.

Herpes simplex itself is considered an STD, but the most common transmission of A isn't through sex.

Please note the bolded part of my quote... I am not talking about using fear tactics alone, but a healthy dose of fear about the consequences of unsafe sex goes well with laying all the facts out on the table (education), in my opinion. I mean, it's like teaching kids to use lifejackets when they're in a boat on open water... yes, you give them the tools to survive falling overboard, but they have to develop a healthy fear of the power of water, too, so they don't see it as some innocuous thing that will never hurt them as long as they are wearing lifejackets. Maybe a lame analogy, but it works for me.

The kind of fear that I DON'T support is the one put forth by churches and youth groups, that you are taught to fear premarital sex because it will cause God to be disappointed in you, or that your future spouse will see you as "damaged goods," or whatever... basically to fear sex because it's all wrapped up with spirituality and how "godly" you are, or not. I do not support those kinds of fear tactics, whatsoever. Fear of getting STD's or getting pregnant (or getting someone else pregnant?)--nothing wrong with that.

Well... Aside from the Asian population, a 2004 survey conducted found that the STD rates in those who took vows of abstinence were marginally lower than those who didn't. That's all I've really got to say here. Carry on.

Only marginally, eh?

Do you have a link to this study?

Perhaps...

It also says:

Which suggests they found no significant correlation between signing said pledge and avoiding STDs--the group of adolescents who signed said pledges contracted STDs at the same rate as those who didn't in the study. So basically, this suggests that abstinence-only education is ineffective at best.

*Points to the part of his last post which says "Marginally lower"*

And, just to clarify something here, 'statistically similar' does not mean 'the same'. It simple means that both figures fall within a given standard deviation of the mean. The facts are that people who take vows of abstinence do no worse and, in most cases, do better than their counterparts who don't partake in such vows.

Is the fact that the government has to step this up is because parents can't be bothered to educate their kids? The problem is, inspite of the information, education,scary stats, and abstinence programmes that are on hand, like smokers, teenagers know the risks, but they'll pretty much do it anyway.

It puts the fear in me. But I'm taking all the precautions and I've got the knoweldge. And I'm sticking to seeing one person exclusively.

4 out of 5 dentists recommend wearing a rubber before screwing today's high school girls. If you yourself are in high school of course. If not, no girls (or rubbers) for you.

But they are including the HPV (human papillova virus) in with the rest of the STDs, which is skewing the results to look much more drastic. HPV is extremely common, and most people who get it never have any symptoms, and it usually goes away on its own.

This is a non-story. Typical twisting of facts by the media.