That number shoots up to 40 per cent among teens who actually admit to having had sex. I’m not sure how the rest of them contracted their diseases, but I’m guessing public toilet seats didn’t have much to do with it.
And those figures don’t even reflect gonorrhea, warts, HIV/AIDS or other nasties that researchers didn’t test for — the teens were only checked for chlamydia, trichomoniasis, herpes and cancer-causing HPV.
All this data comes from a study performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control — about as legitimate and respected a lab as you’ll find anywhere. And it’s downright scary.
From the Huffington Post:
“Those numbers are certainly alarming,” said sex education expert Nora Gelperin, who works with a teen-written Web site called sexetc.org. She said they reflect “the sad state of sex education in our country.”
“Sexuality is still a very taboo subject in our society,” she said. “Teens tell us that they can’t make decisions in the dark and that adults aren’t properly preparing them to make responsible decisions.”
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the study shows that “the national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure, and teenage girls are paying the real price.”
Similar claims were made last year when the government announced the teen birth rate rose between 2005 and 2006, the first increase in 15 years.
Even more amazing, the CDC study found that 48 per cent of African-American teenage girls have at least one STD. Half. Unreal.
The worst of it is that most of these girls probably had no idea they were infected and wouldn’t have sought treatment if they hadn’t taken part in the study. If left untreated, HPV can cause cervical cancer and genital warts, chlamydia can cause infertility or miscarriage, and gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, crippling arthritis and blindness in newborns. Five or ten years down the road, we may well be facing the devastating legacy of inadequate sexual education and untreated STDs.
Image via HIV Info Iceland.
2 responses so far ↓
1 PuterPrsn // Jun 20, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I can’t imagine that our teens are “in the dark” with sex education in all of the schools now, plus all the advertising, free condoms, teen magazines, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps there’s too much - all of the hype makes it sound like sex is A-OK as long as you have a condom, while most adults know that it’s not. Condoms are not 100% effective for anything, and STDs come way down on that list since body hits body even if there’s less risk of pregnancy. Truth to tell, we were doing better in the STD department BEFORE everyone went sex-ed crazy.
2 Lysanne // Jun 20, 2008 at 4:25 pm
If the count is boosted by HPV, bear in mind it’s quite possible to get that without having sex. I recall a story about a whole convent of old nuns having it.
It was finally traced to the fact that because the laundry service washed everybody’s things together, the virus was travelling from one nun to another. Good reason to wash your smalls with lots of boiling water! LOL
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