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Heh, yes, except that parents sometimes don't fulfill that role the way they should. In those cases it should be the obligation of the society to teach those kids on how they should behave.

Communist!!!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...m/health_sex_dc

quote:

Study: Half of Young Americans to Get Sex Diseases Wed Feb 25, 6:55 AM ET Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Half of all young Americans will get a sexually transmitted disease by the age of 25, perhaps because they are ignorant about protection or embarrassed to ask for it, according to several reports issued on Tuesday. The reports, publicized by two nonprofit sexual and youth health groups, said there were 9 million new cases of STD among teens and young adults aged 15 to 24 in 2000. They said the U.S. government's policy of preferring abstinence-only education would only increase those rates. "For the 27 million young Americans under the age of 25 who have had sex, the stakes are simply too high to talk only about abstinence," James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, said in a statement. "Given the prevalence of STDs, young people need all the facts -- including medically accurate information on condoms." The reports, released jointly by Advocates for Youth -- a nonprofit group advocating for sex education, and the sexual health-oriented Alan Guttmacher Institute, pull together information from several different publications. They include a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) report in the latest issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, and a University of North Carolina report based on interviews with teens and young adults. "Approximately 18.9 million new cases of STD occurred in 2000, of which 9.1 million (48 percent) were among persons aged 15 to 24," the CDC report reads. It said three diseases -- human papillomavirus or genital wart virus, a parasitic infection called trichomoniasis and chlamydia -- accounted for 88 percent of all new cases of STDs in 15- to 24-year-olds. Wart virus is the major cause of cervical cancer while chlamydia can cause infertility. POTENTIAL CAUSES The CDC report did not comment on potential causes, but the Guttmacher Institute did. "It is not surprising that teens and young adults contract a disproportionate number of infections," said Guttmacher's Sharon Camp. "Most young people are sexually active, and many are ill equipped to prevent STDs or seek testing and treatment." She said sex education that includes information on condoms is vital to preventing STDs. "Although abstaining from sexual activity is guaranteed to prevent STDs, some adolescents and virtually all young adults will eventually choose to have sex," Camp said. "Before they do, they need realistic sex education that teaches them how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies. It is essential to have medically accurate information about condoms and other contraceptive methods, and guidance on how to access appropriate prevention, testing and treatment services." Teens 15 and older who have had sex have the highest STD rates of any age group in the country, and the United States has the highest STD rate of any industrialized country, according to CDC and World Health Organization (news - web sites) figures. The University of North Carolina report attacked federal policies that encourage abstinence-only education. "Abstinence is, of course, the only 100 percent effective prevention strategy," Shawn Carney, a 17-year-old member of the UNC youth panel, said in a statement. "But with 70 percent of young people having sex by the age of 18, we need to hear about more than abstinence. We need to know how to prevent STDs when we do have sex later in life."

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game, set, match. Thanks for the article

Here in San Diego, we are given a visit every year (in high school) by UCSD students on sexual transmitted diseases. The presentation was only 30 minutes long and it taught me a lot about safety.
It was horrible to watch with actual pictures of the diseases in full action. I don't want more money put into this so they can show X rays and microscope shots and world's ugliest tapeworms out the ass presentations. We do need a better library though mr bush.

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Half of all teenagers might get a sexually transmitted disease??? For the love of God, won't somebody PLEASE think of the priests!?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/16/church.abuse/index.html

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Retro ...

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Originally posted by occrider Half of all teenagers might get a sexually transmitted disease??? For the love of God, won't somebody PLEASE think of the priests!? http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/16/ch...buse/index.html

Ironically they're the ones talking about how "evil" contraceptive pills and condoms are.

Religion and public policy are a dangerous mix.

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What makes me laugh is how nobody is holding the parents, or even the children accountable. We see this rise in STDs in children, and its not the people that are raising the children's fault, or the children themselves, it is religion and governemnt. I'm sorry but that's rediculous and a cop-out and totally missing who is to blame. If you want to blame someone for the rise in unprotected sex, sex and STD growth, blame the people who are suppossed to see, interact and *parent* the children every day, their parents. Its sad to see that we hold the government in higher regards to teach and protect children from STDs then their own parents. You can have as many government programs as you want, teaching abstenance, protected sex or anything you want, but unless you're advocating the government to brainwash children, its STILL up to the parents to make sure their children are safe.

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Originally posted by NeoPhono What makes me laugh is how nobody is holding the parents, or even the children accountable. We see this rise in STDs in children, and its not the people that are raising the children's fault, or the children themselves, it is religion and governemnt. I'm sorry but that's rediculous and a cop-out and totally missing who is to blame. If you want to blame someone for the rise in unprotected sex, sex and STD growth, blame the people who are suppossed to see, interact and *parent* the children every day, their parents. Its sad to see that we hold the government in higher regards to teach and protect children from STDs then their own parents. You can have as many government programs as you want, teaching abstenance, protected sex or anything you want, but unless you're advocating the government to brainwash children, its STILL up to the parents to make sure their children are safe.

If you can point out where it is I said that the parents don't have the primary responsibility of teaching their children about sex, then please point it out to me.

Nobody is contesting that fact.

What I contest are policies supported by only a tiny fringe minority of the population that deliberately lie to young people, and intentionally omit important health information that can, if implemented, save their lives.

Many parents do not in fact teach their children about this issue because they are perhaps too negligent, lazy, or ashamed to do so.



Young people then often turn to each other for information, which is more often than not, misinformation and fallacy. The last thing they need is a campaign of religiously motivated, taxpayer subsidized chicanery that puts them at greater risk.


Listening to the NPR study, I also get the impression that many parents believe, often wrongly so, that the schools are also teaching their children proper sex education.

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Last edited by DaveSZ on Feb-26-2004 at 22:08

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Originally posted by DaveSZ What I contest are policies supported by only a tiny fringe minority of the population that deliberately lie to young people, and intentionally omit important health information that can, if implemented, save their lives. Many parents do not in fact teach their children about this issue because they are perhaps too negligent, lazy, or ashamed to do so.

I do agree with you on both these points, however as I said before, it would be very difficult for the government to ever teach a straight out "safe sex" policy in my opinion. As said in a previous post, this would be much the same as the governemnt switching over to a "drugs in moderation" or a non anti-drug stance...to many this would be the same thing as a pro-drug position by the government.

Therefore, since I am very pessimistic about the government being able to change to this non-abstinance teaching scheme, I have to put the blame back on the parents, where I believe it belongs. I think parenting has never been at such a low in this country. We have divorce, domestic violence and cheating each at all-time high levels. This example put forth by parents, accompanied by poor parenting skills leads to the problem we are facting with children today. The people who I think need the education are adults. They, as I said before, are the ones who interact with children and can have the real impact, in my opinion.

I remember sex ed in school, and it was an akward subject taught by a teacher I thought was a complete idiot. It might not be the same in all classrooms, but I know I took to heart what my parents taught me much more then some week long section in school we all laughed about afterwards.

Anyway, to me school is a place for learning, and even reinforcing *some* ideas that should be taught from home. However, I still say the sole responsiblity for sex ed is parents first and school/government a very distant second.

Further evidence that the abstinence-only programs don't hold water (and because of less use of condoms, I contend are more dangerous):

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Posted on Tue, Mar. 09, 2004 Study: Abstinence pledge doesn't affect sex diseases JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those who don't pledge abstinence, according to a study that examined the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents. Those who make a public pledge to abstain until marriage delay sex, have fewer sex partners and get married earlier, according to the data, gathered from adolescents ages 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later. But the two groups' STD rates were statistically similar. The problem, the study found, is that those virginity "pledgers" are much less likely to use condoms. "It's difficult to simultaneously prepare for sex and say you're not going to have sex," said Peter Bearman, the chair of Columbia University's Department of Sociology, who co-authored the study with Hannah Bruckner of Yale. "The message is really simple: 'Just say no' may work in the short term but doesn't work in the long term." Data from the study, to be presented Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference, was taken from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. That study was funded in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once the data from the early findings study have been reviewed by peers, they will be submitted for publication, Bearman said. Critics of abstinance-only education saw the findings as evidence that adolescents benefit from sex education. "It's a tragedy if we withhold from these kids information about how not to get STDs or not to get pregnant," said Dorothy Mann, executive director of the Family Planning Council, an organization dedicated to reproductive health services. The study found that the STD rates for whites who pledged virginity was 2.8 percent compared with 3.5 percent for those who didn't pledge. For blacks, it was 18.1 percent and 20.3 percent. For Asians, 10.5 percent of virginity pledgers had STDs compared with 5.6 percent of non-pledgers. For Hispanics, it was 6.7 percent and 8.6 percent. Bearman said that from a statistical point of view the numbers were the same. Overall rates combining all races wouldn't be valid, he said. "The point is, substantively, that if you knew someone who pledged, and you knew someone who didn't pledge, you had no basis for thinking that one of them would have an STD over the other," he said. The study also found that in communities where at least 20 percent of adolescents pledged the STD rates for everyone combined was 8.9 percent. In communities with less than 7 percent pledgers, the STD rate was 5.5 percent. "It is the combination of hidden sex and unsafe sex that creates a world where people underestimate the risk of STDs," Bearman said. The study's other findings: _59 percent of males who did not pledge abstinence used a condom during sex; only 40 percent of male pledgers used a condom. _28 percent of female non-pledgers were tested for STDs in the previous year, compared to 14 percent of female pledgers. _99 percent of non-pledgers and 88 percent of pledgers have sex before marriage. ON THE NET http://www.stdconference.org http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansa.../printstory.jsp

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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Thank you for posting that.

I was about to.

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