Article about STD's in young women. Focus on African Americans. With link.?

Question

Does anybody see anything wrong with this article?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/science/12std.html?ex=1363060800&en=3acd338ff262aa80&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Answer 1

I have a big problem with this article.  Why is it the focus is only on girls?  Someone had to infect them in the first place, right?  And my guess is that BOYS had something to do with it.  The article makes this sound like it's purely a female problem-  and I think that gives a very misleading and harmful impression.  How can we combat STD's without educating all as to the dangers and how to prevent them?  

You might find this surprising but over in the Gender and Women's studies forum here on Y/A, this article is being thrown in the faces of women as "evidence" of a supposedly "S****y" generation "tainted by feminism"....and these are guys who are saying this...sitting on their self-righteous high horses, thinking that it's just a FEMALE issue.  Jeez...as if the girls got STD's by some form of "miraculous conception"!  If one in four girls has an STD, how many boys have STD's?  And what role do they play in all of this?  It think we need to look at the problem objectively.  But with an article that only pinpoints stats on girls, you leave bozos that lack critical thinking skills (like in the GWS forum) to interpret all kinds of harmful, non-constructive, inaccurate information and spurious correlations.  My opinion:  by leaving boys out of the equation and focusing solely on girls and African Americans, the article encourages sexism and racism and I think we have enough of that already in society today.

Just my opinion.

Answer 2

There's no need to sugarcoat news like this.  The best way that resources will be put to use to combat STD's in black girls is by POINTING OUT THE PROBLEM.

Answer 3

I don't see that the study was focused on African Americans. I saw that they found African American girls tend to have been infected more. It doesn't say why that is.

Maybe a study needs to be done on why African Americans seem to be more prone to infection.

I think it's less important to know which diseases each one of them has and how much Clamidia and how much herpes etc. More important is to focus on how to prevent them. Disease=Bad no matter which disease it is. The key is PREVENTION and how to do that.

It shouldn't come a s a shock to anyone that disease is so rampant when the only methods of prevention they give you at school is "don't do it"

Answer 4

I've seen several articles about the study. Some mention the African American statistics vs. white, and some don't. I would be curious to know if that was an informed decision one way or another. Whatever your take on the articles, you've got to admit the findings are shocking. There are so many teens and young women and men putting themselves at risk. They are obviously not practicing safe s*x, which not only puts their health at risk but of course also increases the risk of unwanted pregnancies. Scary!

From Planned Parenthood:

"In fact, the lifetime risk for contracting HPV is at least 50 percent for all sexually active women and men, and, it is estimated that, by the age of 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired sexually transmitted HPV (CDC, 2004; CDC, 2006)."

update: Washington Post/AP has a more informative article. They show the study said 2% had herpes.