Planned Parenthood | Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund

2006 CDC report on STIs not looking too hot

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by Anna

Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund

To many teenagers and twenty-somethings, STIs are perceived as distant. Diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea as a result of unprotected sex are viewed in much the same way as lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking-"sure, it happens to other people, but it won't happen to me" seems to be the predominant outlook.

There is a sharp disparity between this line of thought and the hard facts, especially because teens and young adults are by far the most hard-hit demographic when it comes to STIs. Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance for 2006. About 19 million Americans, half of whom were between the ages of 15 and 24, contracted an STI in 2006. Chlamydia and gonorrhea were the most widely reported. Chlamydia prevalence was found to be 347.8 cases per 100,000 people and gonorrhea 120.9 per 100,000.

Looking at the graphs for these diseases, which visually indicate how prevalence rates have risen or decreased over the last several decades (or the last century, when looking at the syphilis graph), we can see that chlamydia and gonorrhea have both become more common in the past few years-gonorrhea after a long period of decrease in numbers and chlamydia as a continuation of a long-standing increase. Experts are interpreting these heightened infection rates as the result of heightened screening rates, which is, of course, a good thing-more people being screened means more people are aware of their infection and can be treated. But the problem of self-perpetuation persists; diseases like chlamydia may have no noticeable symptoms for long periods of time, meaning many carriers spread the disease without ever knowing they have it.

Reading the CDC report deeply affected me by bringing home the point that, despite advancements in medical care and more and more people being tested and treated for STIs, they are not going away. In fact, some (like chlamydia) are even becoming more of a problem than ever before. Since half of all new infections occur in 15- to 24-year-olds, it really made me stop and think about how many people are suffering due to what might be a simple lack of knowledge, not because they are ignorant, but because they aren't being told what they need to know.

A lot of this naiveté springs from abstinence-only education and "abstinence pledges," in which middle and high school students promise not to have sex until they are married. Such programs presume that this kind of promise means that educators don't need to tell students about STIs or condoms or how to protect themselves if they do have sex, because if they swore abstinence they definitely aren't going to do anything, right? Very, very wrong-88 percent of these students have premarital sex anyway, and when they do, they are less likely to use condoms or other forms of protection than students who receive comprehensive sex ed that actually talks about safe versus unsafe sex. Abstinence-only education, the leading type in America today, is not doing our youth any favors. This is clear when we look at solid facts such as how many teenagers contract STIs every year and how many of these transmissions could have been avoided without too much trouble-an explanation of why and how to use a condom, for example.

I know that abstinence-only education is something that those of us who support reproductive rights take shots at all the time, but when one looks at the real consequences of asking this country's kids to simply ignore something as basic as human sexuality….well, it's hard not to.