Study: Teen Girls Lack Basic Facts About Most STDs

Internet Broadcast System ^ | 1/5/06 | Staff

[Millee]

Most sexually active teenage girls know relatively little about sexually transmitted diseases until it is too late, according to new research.

In a survey of 300 adolescent girls in the Pittsburgh area, Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that girls who reported having been diagnosed with an STD knew more about that particular disease than other girls, but did not know more about the other diseases.

The findings are published in the January edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

On average, with the exception of HIV/AIDS, the teens did not know many basic facts about STDs, said Julie Downs, lead author of the study.

"Our schools have decided to focus on AIDS, and that has come at a cost," she said. "Teens just aren't being taught about these other diseases, and so they may come away with a false sense of confidence."

The study's findings are troubling because teenagers who know little about STDs are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and to delay the treatment of STDs, the researchers said.

And the consequences can be severe. Genital herpes, for example, cannot be cured. Genital warts can render a woman more susceptible to cervical cancer, and chlamydia can lead to infertility.

[Nonstatist]

Young people need to have it BEAT INTO THEIR HEADS that sex has consequences.

HPV can lead to cancer, but there are 80 strains of it and the huge majority of college girls never get cancer(they get warts, dysplasia, herpes, etc).. So, its like.. whats the big deal?

If I was wrong about this, those numbers wouldnt be rising every year.. And youre right, some people think condoms are the catch all solution to what is hugely a moral, self-discipline problem. Whats a little HPV between friends?

[rmlew]

These days, they just tell girls that you can't get pregnant or STDS if you just "give BJs."
Call it the Monica Lewinsky approach.
Actually, oral sex is a great way to spread STD's.
Herpes, Gonorroea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, and even HIV are all transimitted through felatio and cunnilingus.

I'll never forget one experiance. I was doing some consulting work for an "Ears Nose Throat" practice. A 13-year-old girl comes in with her mother due to a sore throat that will not go away.
I see the mother angrily walk out of the examining room. About a 30-seconds later, from the office we hear a loud exclamation of:
"Gonorrhea?! But I'm a virgin! I've never had sex."
A few minutes later the girl walks out of the examining room with the physician. The mother, who could not hear the conversation then figures out the diagnosis, after arguing with the physician, who could not tell her the truth. Then all heck broke lose with the mother screaming at the doctor, the girl whinning that she simply had oral sex, and the physician looking paler than his jacket!

[WorkingClassFilth]

Get a grip. This article's scope is restricted to American schools - specifically those in PA. STD education in Sex-Ed classes literally saturates American publik skoolz.

Because some parents object to homosexual advocacy programs in grade school or, heavens forbid, advocating abstinence as the only viable option for 100% success in avoiding STD's does not mean that this information is unavailable, widely taught or that copious amounts of graphic information is not available in class, at the school nurses office or a thousand and one other sources.

If 10 foot tall wall murals of open lesions, chancres and dripping syphilitic sores were painted on the walls at your local high school, advocates for ever more Sex-Ed would still cry that not enough information is in the hands of the innocent and earnestly inquiring youths. Thanks for the laugh.

[gathersnomoss]

So what? It's the other white meat.

Thanks to all of the BJ voters who still have their heads up their @$$e$.

[Guenevere]

Nope. It's all about abstinence.

One could wish.

If it were 'all about abstinence' and the message hit home....we wouldn't be worrying about STD's!

Sex Ed generally teaches the types of sexually transmitted diseases.....while promoting abstinence...yes, even today.(but who knows how hard they take the abstinence approach)

The media, however, has a louder, larger voice and hypes sex.....all kinds of sex....to our young folk without ever mentioninig what can happen when a younster has 'all kinds of sex'....

It's like there's no tomorrow in TV/Movieland.

And then our young women, and men find out they're diseased, impotent or barren.

[mlc9852]

Let me see if I understand this. You are blaming the teen (unwed) pregnancy rate and sexually transmitted diseases on Christian conservatives? Logical.

[mlc9852]

Where did you get your recent abortion statistics? I was under the impression they had actually gone down.