Friday, November 03, 2006

Of Sex and Science

A new study has determined that there is no firm link between promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases. They point to the fact that nations with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS are not the nations with the highest rates of promiscuity.

Sometimes, scientists fucking kill me. I don’t know what part if "sexually transmitted" is confusing.

Don’t get me wrong, in general, I love them. I question everything, have the hots for Jamie and Adam on Mythbusters (I know, they’re not actually scientists,) and become utterly provoked when pseudo-scientists like ghost hunters claim what they do is science though they’ve clearly never heard the words "scientific method."

But to deny that promiscuity has any correlation to sexually transmitted disease defies reason. Any fool knows, if you continue to dip from the well, eventually, you’ll pull up the goldfish that’s been down there.

Their reasoning takes into account only one factor contributing to the spread of one STD. The scientists themselves displayed a lack of cultural understanding when they said they expected to see the most promiscuous behavior in regions like Africa where the virus is most concentrated.

Africa... where so many people are devout Muslims or Christians. This is where they expected the highest concentration of promiscuity.

Morons.

Of course the disease is spreading rapidly when a good potion of the continent had HIV before we knew how to prevent it and few people could afford condoms once we understood they protection they afford.

Nowadays, every African woman who sleeps with a single man, and make no mistake, that’s the average number of partners for an African woman, has a fifty-fifty chance of contracting the disease. And every single woman who has the virus can give birth and pass it down to more than one child before she dies. It’s amazing there are any Africans left, with or without promiscuity.
They may as well have said "there are more dark people in Africa than in Europe, ergo, sleeping with dark people has no direct effect on the outcome of your potential offspring’s skin tone." It makes about as much sense.

It’s simply not possible to determine the effect of promiscuity on the spread of disease without removing other factors which would skew the results. No credible scientist would run such a study and call the results conclusive. I’m confidant when the test subjects are all from a relatively equal socioeconomic class and all have equal access to condoms, you’ll find sexually transmitted disease is more prevalent in the more promiscuous population.

And lest you think condom use is the single difference in the spread of disease, and promiscuity may be dismissed as a factor, you should understand condoms do not prevent all STD’s and won’t prevent any at all if improperly used. Many people are not aware of the basics principles of condom use for disease prevention and either don’t use condoms for the entire duration of all sexual encounters or don’t use condoms and dental dams during oral sex.

Ok, so why am I getting all worked up about this? Well, for one, I like to beat dead horses, and this bastard’s still needs one last kick. But mostly because the claims of this study are dangerous. They promote a false sense of security. And the people most at risk are the ones we should be most passionate about protecting. They are the young, who have more time and drive to be promiscuous and less experience discerning when something is nonsense.
I’m pissed because I have children, who will one day want to have sex, and I will have to combat the dangerous misinformation coming from people who, at first blush, seem to be experts.

200 years ago, everyone knew the prostitute down in the red light district was going to die of the pox before the holy housewife. It took modern fucking science to deny what common sense has always known.

You can find an article on the study I'm bitching about here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, it's more rational to take this as evidence that HIV may not necessarily be sexually transmitted. If you track the spread of a more conventional STD like syphlis / gonnorrhea, they do exhibit the expected pattern, whereas HIV does not.

Go (for example) here for more information.

Anonymous said...

Actually, its not all that surprising that promiscuity is orthogonal to STI transmission - there are so many other variables, like prevalence of correct condom use, emphasis on sex-ed in schools, access to STI testing and medication, etc. Promiscuity is a pretty small factor, all things considered.