Condomania

Eve's Bite , chapter 14  " The Rubber Hits The road",  details how  public health and educational authorities  have put all their faith into the condom as a protective measure against STIs and how this faith is misguided.

And to be sure my oldest children have all been given this message and practiced  fitting condoms to phallic objects as part of their "health" curriculum.

So we should be seeing a decline in STIs right?

Wrong.

As if on cue here is this mornings herald: Warning as sex-related disease cases rise sharply

Since 2001 the rate of gonorrhoea in Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of plenty has more than doubled with over 50% of the cases occurring in people under 25.

Even more worrisome  up to 1/3 of the cases are of an antibiotic resistant  strain.

Needless to say the Herald's story finishes with the usual blather from Family Planning

Dr Helen Roberts, the Family Planning Association's research manager for the northern region, said the increase in ciprofloxacin resistance was quite worrying, as the alternative, ceftriaxone, was quite difficult to access in primary care.

"We can only hope that we don't start to get ceftriaxone-resistance because then we really have a problem."

It was also worth noting that 50 per cent of the cases were in people over 26, she said.

The message was simple, Dr Roberts added - use condoms or have regular checks when changing partners.

The U.S. CDC is also alarmed at rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea

However, belatedly as it may be, they  are not putting all their eggs in the  condom basket.

The CDC said the highest reported rates of infection are among sexually active teenagers and young adults, and the disease is seen disproportionately among U.S. blacks. Proper condom use and sexual abstention can prevent the spread of the disease, the CDC said.

Perhaps eventually the penny will drop that lifestyle choices have consequences and the powers that be will see fit to teach  children that.

But that's someway off I fear.

 

Comments

[Psycho Milt]

Promoting the use of condoms is a sensible approach to tackling STDs. Unfortunately, there's something about having earnest liberals tell you what you really, really should do that convinces kids they really, really should do the exact opposite. It's the same principle by which having nice middle class people telling you it's uncool to smoke makes nurturing a 40-a-day addiction a must-do-at-earliest-opportunity kind of thing. Really, we could do with squads of middle-aged liberals to go around schools telling kids it's deeply uncool to use condoms - the resulting intensive condom use would probably slash the rate of infection.

[belt]

I couldn't get laid until I was 22. So that was safe I guess. Being ugly and not in the in-crowd is a huge factor in sexual health I can tell you.

"Perhaps eventually the penny will drop that lifestyle choices have consequences and the powers that be will see fit to teach children that."

My parents taught me that they couldn't stop me doing whatever I wanted to do (they didn't tell me girls wouldn't want to ;), but they DID tell me not to make babies unless I was trying to do so deliberately.

Bless them.

STDs aside, ANYONE who has ANY common sense will use contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies and life-changing consequences at a young age.

However, the proliferation of "the pill" amongst teenage girls means that condoms are rarely used. And that's one of the possibilities why STDs are still a headline these days.

It's not a failure of condoms, necessarily, but the general acceptance of the pill for teenage women that is probably at fault.

Well, you're opinion is as good as mine - without proof.

[Fletch]

The problem is not with condoms not being used enough: the problem is that condoms don't stop many STD's; in fact, one could go so far as to say that the more condoms are promoted and used with the idea that they will stop disease, the more instances of sexual disease will go up.

In other words Dr Roberts, in promoting condom use, is actually increasing the rate of STDs.

[Andrew McIntosh]

If the same amount of money and effort put into road safety was spent promoting sexual safety we would be a much healthier society and the tax burden on our health system would be minimised.

Pat Buchanan wrote the following in 2002.

"Consider, if you will, last summer's report from the Department of Health and Human Services titled, "Scientific Evidence on Condom Effectiveness for Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention."

The report first gave the numbers of new cases of STDs in the year: 63,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS, 70,000 of syphilis, 650,000 of gonorrhea, 1 million of genital herpes, 3 million of chlamydia, 5 million of trichomoniasis, 5.5 million of human papillomavirus.

The study then coldly concluded there is "no clinical proof" of the effectiveness of condoms in preventing genital herpes, syphilis, chancroid, trichomoniasis or chlamydia, and no clinical proof of their effectiveness in preventing gonorrhea in women, though condoms do offer "some risk protection" for men against gonorrhea.

Condoms also do provide 85 percent protection against the HIV/AIDS virus, or roughly the odds one has of escaping unscathed when playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter with one chamber lethally loaded – if you're interested in playing Russian roulette.

Thus, according to our own government, condoms are a fraud. And partly because they believed that fraud, 45 million Americans now suffer from herpes, for which there is no known cure, and 900,000 suffer from HIV/AIDS."

Are these diseases spreading because of a lack of availability of condoms? Hardly. As Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family told Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes": "The federal government has spent $3 billion in the last 30 years to promote the safe-sex ideology, and it's been a disaster. At the time they started, there were only two sexually transmitted diseases that were at an epidemic level, and there are now more than 20. One in three Americans over 10 years of age has a sexually transmitted disease."

According to Dobson, the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that even this astronomical figure may be low. If what he says is accurate, America's young have been lied to about condoms and are suffering in the millions and dying in the thousands for having believed those lies.

Former Congressman Dr. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma makes exactly that charge against the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control. "The failure of public-health efforts to prevent the STD epidemic in America," says Coburn, "is related to CDC's 'safe-sex' promotion and its attempt to withhold from the American people the truth of condom ineffectiveness."

"[T]he CDC has systematically hidden and misrepresented vital medical evidence regarding the ineffectiveness of condoms to prevent the transmission of STDs. The CDC's refusal to acknowledge clinical research has contributed to the massive STD epidemic."

And because women believed that "condoms would protect them during intercourse," says Coburn, "millions of women in our country now suffer from the ravages of diseases, including pelvic cancer infections, infertility and cervical cancer."

Coburn calls for the same kind of warning labels on condoms as we put on cigarette packs."

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26666

It's time we as a country started taking our health back, and realising just how costly permissive Policies are to the Public purse.

[Psycho Milt]

So, we spent up large promoting safe sex, and lots of people just ignored our advice. Well, duh. No surprises there. But, according to you guys, if we'd spent up large promoting abstinence instead, these same people would have listened to the message and followed it instead of ignoring it. Is this wishful thinking, or what?

[andrei]

Promoting the use of condoms is a sensible approach to tackling STDs

If so why the upsurge in the rate of gonorrhoea in the past 4 years, as the published figures show?

It has been very well known for many years that they are not 100% infallible in preventing pregnancy.

So could you conceive that just maybe condoms are not as effective as claimed for preventing STIs and that the message just encourages promiscuity.

With regards to STIs such as herpes they are virtually hopeless.

Imagine if we tackled drink driving with the message "if you drink then have a cup of black coffee before driving"?

How well would that work do you suppose?

The analogy might not be as far fetched as you might think.

[ZenTiger]

I think you've missed the point Psycho. We spent up large promoting safe sex, and many people followed the advice (used condoms) and are now discovering that although they protect one from pregnancy (give or take the odd mishap), they aren't particularly effective at preventing the spread of STI's.

I suspect many people assumed condoms kept people safe and allowed excessive promiscuity. So, whilst preaching abstinence might be ignored, if at least the real stats were taught and mentioned with regard to STI's etc the effect would possibly be reduced promiscuity.

It's an easy enough test to try. Simply start putting such information on condom packets and advertising the dangers of condom use and see what happens.

It's called "informed choices". Something that seems to have been off the agenda for the last 20 years or so.

[Shout Above The Noise]

The issue for me is that the MOH is selling the message that frogs are the be-all and end-all for protection from all STIs, when clearly they are not.

The message should be that condoms offer reasonable protection against the real nasties like HIV & Hep C, but fuck all else...

[Shout Above The Noise]

Sorry, just to be pedantic, it's Hep B condoms offer reasonable protection against.

[Psycho Milt]

I don't think I have missed the point Zen. Information about condom use that I've seen describes condoms as "reducing the risk" of infection, not eliminating it. And American info always lists abstinence ahead of condom use. I think we're looking here at people either ignoring that advice and not bothering with either abstinence or condoms, or letting wishful thinking delude them that "reducing" risk equates with "eliminating" it.

Andrei - as usual, I have a counter-analogy! I'd compare the safe sex message with the clean needles message for junkies. If you're pondering whether to shoot up some heroin and decide "Well, the authorities say it's perfectly safe as long as I don't share needles," you've both misunderstood the message, and proved yourself Too Stupid to Live, as the D4 put it. If there are junkies out there who misinterpreted the message that way, more fool them.

[Paula]

New York City now has its own official municipal condom, labeled as such,
which is free and available in clothing stores, coffee shops, and numerous
public places. The city is distributing 1.5 million of them per month. The
condoms are in black wrappers with nine colored circles in the same
pattern used by the NYC subway system. It is a city that has gone
sexually berserk!

[usabikes]

Once again, my daughter's High School "health ed" guff informs students that "used properly, condoms are 90% effective at preventing pregnancy." No doubt Ferrari would say that "used properly, our turbo sports car is 100% safe" But show me a 16 year old that could be trusted to do so :-)

I read several years ago that surgeons are using two pairs of latex gloves during operations rather than one, as they were convinced they needed the extra protection from infection. Not good news I'd imagine for roughhousing homosexuals especially...

And as has been said condoms are quite inadequate for STI protection. Various US States are in the throes of making HPV innoculations mandatory for High School girls. Which combined with our NZ schools decision to not even inform parents when their own children seek counselling on sexual activity (while normally we *must* be consulted before so much as a tooth is filled ) seems to add up to a systemic ideology that "knows better" than we poor benighted parents, while simultaneously destroying our children. And the buck never seems to stop anywhere.

Well done intelligensia!

[Psycho Milt]

Seems like we shouldn't throw money at abstinence programmes either: http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2007/04/faith-based-policy-fails-again.html

[usabikes]

Would like to see more evidence on this Milt, it doesn't fit with survey results I have encountered which indicate a marked improvement in behaviour.

[andrei]

I been waiting for someone to bring that up Milt.

Your knowledge of this report is only from No Right turn and perhaps his Guardian link.

Not from the report itself.

I have the report and I am digesting it, maybe for a full post.

But the real joker in the pack is this.

The study looks at four different programs in four different states with different demographics. Here are the 4 demographics as described in the report

1. Mostly middle- and
   working-class, twoparent,
   white, non-
   Hispanic families.
   Semi-rural setting.

2. Largely poor, singleparent,
   African American
   and Hispanic families.
   Urban setting.

3. Predominantly poor,
   single-parent, African
   American families.
   Urban setting.

4. Predominantly poor,
   single-parent, African
   American families.
   Rural setting.

In fact the first described demographic accounts for only about 20% of the entire sample.

Since these programs were first introduced (by Clinton not by Bush, as it happens) there has been a noticable decline in Teen pregnancies across the USA.

So while the Guardian and No Right Turn can get all excited they can only do so if they ignore that this survey is stacked with poor black children from sole parent households and barely represents the average American teenager at all.

[peter]

My theory is that those who see the significance of taking a celibacy vow are those that would otherwise be very tempted.

For the sexually active, or the totally inactive, the vow is irrelevant.