Posted on 02/03/2003 3:00:24 PM PST by joesnuffy
Phil Brennan Monday, Feb. 3, 2003
Every day a silent epidemic strikes 8,000 American youngsters, warns Dr. Meg Meeker, and it is killing and physically and psychologically crippling hordes of Americas children.
Dr. Meeker, author of the new book "Epidemic," told a rapt C-PAC audience Friday that she was speaking "on behalf of the millions of American teen-agers who cannot speak for themselves, who cannot articulate how to preserve the sanctity of their lives as they are being crushed amidst our culture which is so toxic to their sensibilities and their sensitivities to their psyches, to their bodies, to their sexuality."
"In 2003 we are living in the midst of a public health epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases amongst 12- to 18-year-old children, and an epidemic of depression related to much of the promiscuous sexual activity amongst our youth."
The epidemic has been "caused by our silence as sit by and allow big businesses to use sexual advertising to our children to sell their stuff," she charged.
"Selling sex to our children makes a lot of money for a lot of businesses. Theres one reason why we live in the most promiscuous nation on the face of the earth. Theres one reason why we allow sex to be sold to our children: money."
The results are horrifying. "We live in the midst of an epidemic of diseases, bacteria and viruses which are making their way up to the beautiful and tender reproductive tracts of our children and strangling them towards infertility and cancer and threatening their very lives.
"What I have seen in my beautiful quiet and suburban northern Michigan practice is occurring nationwide, and when I turned to the medical literature two years ago to see if what I was experiencing was unique I found that the Center for Disease Control talks about the hidden epidemic of 15 million Americans getting a new sexually transmitted disease every year and two thirds of them being in people under 25, my patients, your children, the kids on your kids basketball teams and soccer teams and ballet recitals."
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, one in five Americans 12 years and older test positive for genital herpes.
Forty-six percent of young teen-age girls after just one episode of intercourse contracts human papilloma virus (HPV), and 14 percent of them will go on to develop signs of cervical cancer, and more womens lives are given over to cervical cancer every year than to HIV and AIDS.
This, she warns "is not a time for mothers and fathers and doctors and teachers and politicians to be silent about the sanctity of the life of our teen-agers."
What has been our answer to this out-of-control scourge, she asked. Condoms. "We have taught 14-, 13-, 12-year-old kids to put condoms on bananas. We have done this for 15 or 20 years."
In 1960 there were just two sexually transmitted diseases, syphilis and gonorrhea. After 20 years of teaching our kids how to use condoms, we now boast 30 or more sexually transmitted diseases among 12- to 18-year-old children. Condoms have failed as an answer.
"A little over a year ago the National Institutes for Health reviewed all the best condom literature available in the world. They found that condoms, if used 100 percent of the time correctly, may reduce the risk of HIV by 87 percent in men and women, and it may reduce the risk of gonorrhea in men, but for all of the other sexually transmitted diseases which infect beautiful heterosexual children across the country there is insufficient evidence that condoms work at all.
"Yet we are still teaching condoms and more condoms in our schools. As a physician I consider it malpractice to hand one of my patients a condom and tell them that they will be safe when the NIH doesnt say so.
"We have the answer. It is abstinence education. Many opponents of abstinence say it doesnt work - it does work all the time. The kids are willing to learn it. Are we willing to teach it?"
Sex among girls is leading to an epidemic of cancer, she revealed. "The 14-, 15-year-old girls cervix cannot handle bacteria and viruses. They flourish and turn into cancer much more quickly than in a 25-year-old."
All of this promiscuous sexual activity among youngsters is having another deadly effect: serious depression and sometimes suicide.
"We are living in an epidemic of depression, where one out of three American teen-agers have thought of killing themselves, much of this related to sexual activity.
"Are we willing to tell teen-agers that sexual health trumps sexual freedom?" she asked, adding that wed better be.
So sad but true, to many parents are "friends" to their kids and not parents and
further set the "example" by having no moral compass
No absolutes anymore just "opinions" (Judges 17:5)
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It will soon be 40 years since the massive sexual revolution of the mid '60s. We have parents and now grandparens who are just as dedicated to pushing promiscuous sex as they were 15, 20, and 35 years ago. That is the problem. The answer to the question is NO.
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I have the book in my library. It is well worth a read.
Even at this late date, the Baby Boomers simply cannot bring themselves to concede that their parents were actually right about almost everything.
I'm in my mid-forties. Maybe, I'm getting old, but I don't recall too many girls before college (let alone before the age of 14!) having numerous sexual experiences at my old high school and then brag about it like a few (emphasis on few) of the more creepy, ungentlemanly (probably dishonest braggert) jerk guys did. Today, it's a badge of honor for boys and girls alike to have had several partners before the age of 16. Sad. Especially for the girls. As if there are no longer immature guys who are after one thing--and it ain't love in a romantic sense or a meaningful commitment!!!
Such casual dropping-in of bigotry. Are "non-heterosexual" children -- the single largest cohort for depression and suicide in this country, and who also do get STDs -- to be so casually written off? I guess they're not "beautiful" enough, are they, Doctor?
"Many of the "sexual freedom" crowd were outraged that parents and educators were calling for abstinence training instead of encouraging the kids to continue finding more natural outlets for their interests.
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