STDs - Dangers
Yes,
Sex is Good for You
as a male in a dozen different ways. But sex can also kill you in a
hundred different ways if you're not careful. The reason is that there are a
number of potent
STD's
that could kill you, or at least "kill you earlier" by shortening your life
span. The answer to that question I am going to cover below and it is
admittedly rather sobering:
We will look at HIV, but let's start with the much more common HPV, Chlamydia, and
HSV-2. As I covered in
another link on
STD's, HPV can kill males through both oral or mouth cancer
and/or penile cancer and HIV through many pathways. Chlamydia can lead
infertility and HSV-2 to genital warts and feeling sick during outbreaks.
So what are your odds if you just grab someone off the street and engage in some
kind of risky behavior. Consider that 15-19 year olds have these odds of
having the following STDs [1]:
1)
HPV: 24.5%
2)
HSV-2: 2.3%
3)
Chlamydia: 4.6%
In other words, a typical, average, normal 15-19 year old has about one in four
chance of having HPV. However, most guys reading this site aren't dating
underage teens. Consider this: the HPV rate, according to the same
study [1],
skyrockets to 44.8% for an average 20-24 year old, putting that age
bracket to almost 50/50. And that
makes sense: with each year or two that pass by, many women have
additional partners and often accumulate different STDs, especially the viruses
that have no cure. In other words, imagine the numbers for a woman in her
30's or 40's that has had many partners. Your odds of being exposed to HPV
are much higher.
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It's not wonder, because those same surveyors found that a high percentage (of
young women at least) use little to no protection. Looking at the numbers
you can see that about 40% of 20-24 year olds left themselves vulnerable to an
STD. [2] Now perhaps older couples are more careful, but "humans are
humans" and I doubt the numbers are that much different for any age bracket.
1) 20% have had intercourse with "no method"
2) 11.8% used "the pill".
3) 8.1% used the withdrawal method
This is further supported by the 20-24 year old stats on race, where the first,
second and third numbers are percentages by white women, black and hispanic,
respectively. [3]
1) No method 10.3 25.2 40.8
2) Pill 40.7 27.8 20.0
3) Withdrawal 14.3 ** 11.
Notice that in all cases the numbers add to between 50 and 75%.
In other words, if you change partners, it is more than likely that she had
unprotected sex in the last year, at least for 20-24 year olds. Again, I
doubt that any age range is significantly different.
Probability of HIV Infection
Calculating your odds of HIV infection is much more difficult as I could find no
numbers by age range and gender for infection rates. But it is possible to
come up with a rough idea. We know that as of 2006 there are about 1.1
million infected individuals in the U.S. of all ages. [4] Of this, about half
(48.1%) are "men having sex with men".
This means there are about 570,000 heterosexuals with AIDs and if we assume about
half of those are females, that is 285,000 women. Another reasonable
assumption is that in most cases the females will be between 20 and about 44
years old. Looking at standard demographic charts (for 2008), we can see that
there are about 51.4 million females between these ages which puts your odds at
roughly 1.1% or 1 in 89.
So how can you protect yourself? How can you preserve your health and life
from these deadly diseases? Well, there are not a lot of good options
other than testing, which is of course quite awkward. A condom is not going to
protect you from HPV, for example.
A significant block of women are getting vaccinated (Gardasil and Cervarix) for some strains of
HPV, but for a huge percentage women it is too late. There is some chance
that science in the next decade or two will conquer some of these foes as well.
The medical advances are quite astonishing. But, for now, "forewarned is
forearmed" is about all that can be said.
1) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5806a1.htm#tab2, TABLE 4.
Selected measures of pregnancies, births, birth characteristics, induced
abortions, cases of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency
syndrome (HIV/AIDS), sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and sexual violence
among females aged 10--24 years,* by age group --- National Vital Statistics
System and multiple surveillance studies, United States, 2004--2006.
