The way you've phrased this, it sounds like you are casting "other hard to cure STDs" as a protective measure against the "threat of 1960s style of unprotected sex wave."
Isn't sexual freedom a goal?
You always have the risk of undesired pregnancy and the best cure for that is the condom, since birth control pills are basically hormone bombs, not very healthy for women in the long run, or you could undergo surgery, which is invasive and not without peril. So just use the condom already, those minty ones are actually cool.
And if we don't have "sexual freedom" it's probably because there are really good reasons for it. We shouldn't dismiss taboos without considering that some of them is why we've survived for so long.
If that's the way you want to live your life, it is fine. But don't try to impose your ideas to other people.
Because the way I see it, this is more than the health of the individual at risk, being about the health of the group.
What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?
This is the same misguided logic you tried to use on bad_user. You really don't get it and honestly I don't care if you ever do or not.
Free speech does not mean freedom from criticism.
bad_user and myself are both influencing others. We're not imposing anything at all. He's fine to criticize if he wants, that wasn't the issue at all. He didn't understand the difference between social pressure (which I'm advocating along with bad_user) and imposing. They aren't the same thing.
He's trying to split hairs with everyone on HN and not be intellectually honest so it's not worth discussing. Very easy to see what bad_user and myself meant. But the downvotes on noncoml's post speak for itself, most people are getting it.
Now you're repeating the complaints, and on top of that splitting hairs while complaining about others splitting hairs while doing so.
To me your responses just makes this whole exchange look sillier.
Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean you have the intellectual honestly and he doesn’t.
Also, if it’s not worth discussing, just stop discussing. What’s with this passive aggressive statement?
Btw, since downvotes seem to be important to you: every single reply of yours in this thread is negative.
You mentioned my name. What did you expect?
Furthermore I never said I stopped discussing, unlike you.
Finally, you are the one who is trying to split a hair: “Imposing your opinion” might be a bit strong, but it’s closer to “social pressure” than “influencing” is.
Discussing with you can be considered influencing.
“Social pressure” can be a whole town marginalizing you and your family because you are gay.
I don’t think I am trying to split hair. They are very different things.
"> I am for social pressures against unprotected sex. What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?"
Yes, I really don't get it how is this preventing you to voice your opinion.
I honestly don't care what you think or support, but when you are suggesting "social pressure" in order for people follow your opinion then you will find me calling you out.
If you don't see the difference about public smoking and unprotected sex, then I don't think there is any point discussing this.
However your original comment sounded more concerned about morals than public health.
If it was the later and I misunderstood it, then please forgive me.
Lots of women, including my wife, are perfectly happy with hormonal birth control. For others, there are lots of other options, and even more in development. It’s a very personal decision, but condoms are by far among the least effective techniques.
> And if we don't have "sexual freedom" it's probably because there are really good reasons for it. We shouldn't dismiss taboos without considering that some of them is why we've survived for so long.
The entire parable of Chesterson’s fence suggests that we shouldn’t get rid of something in society without knowing what function it was serving. It doesn’t suggest never reforming society at all.
The taboo against fornication is obviously there to prevent the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancy. If we have other ways to prevent these side-effects, there is no longer any reason for the taboo; much as the religious taboo of not eating pork or shellfish no longer serve the same useful purpose they did in the ancient Middle East.
A condom is not the best option for birth control, merely one of the options. The best would be voluntary sterilization for both the man and the woman. There are other non-hormonal birth control methods, such as a copper IUD and other barrier methods that work, some better than a condom and some worse.
The main benefit from a condom is STD protection, but for that to be effective they need to be readily available to everyone and cheap enough to afford.
I've heard this a few times but I'm curious for sources on the fact that they're not healthy. They're certainly not natural, but, like, living until you're 80 years old isn't particularly natural either. Do you mind expanding on this?
I read it as him casting the threat of those 'hard to cure STDs' as an incentive for people to not take the 1% risk of HIV infection.
So no, unprotected sexual freedom isn't a practical goal for medical science. Better to use condoms instead.
I'm a little tired of the disconnect between medical advice and reality when it comes to sexual practices. Dental dams, anyone? Sure they're smart; I don't think I've seen one outside of health class. Doctors could easily provide more helpful advice.
For whom? Not for me.
What do you mean?
That I do not believe that sexual freedom is a goal.
Even then, knowledge of condoms wasn't widespread like it is now. My grandmother was super-pissed-off when my grandfather told her about them after she was pregnant for 18 months straight! She made it a point to tell me that I had to tell my future wife about birth control! (What made it funnier was that, at the time, if you didn't know what a condom was you were living under a very large rock!)
Hepatitis C isn't a retrovirus, so I don't understand what you're saying.
It's certainly a manageable one, and the stigma around it is silly, but if the common cold is a disease, then herpes is.
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ypa8nb/did-big-pharma...
Does it really take a company to make people think of it as a disease?
"Oh my penis feels like it's on fire and oozing all over me. However, I wouldn't call it a disease."
Also the legalization of abortion in 1972 contributed to this as well.
During those times there were lots of people having lots of sex. Unwashed sex with a string scent of sandalwood and patchouli, but still lots of sex, drugs, and rock n roll.
Then you had the disco era, fueled by fruity drinks and cocaine, sideburns, and lots of finger guns. There was still a bunch of sex. Those people would become yuppies, while many of the Free Love people would have moved into the woods to eat tree bark and become one with Gaia.
The most likely significant health threat as far as STDs go in the future are anti-biotic resistant gonorrhea. There were a couple of those spreading in Asia a couple years ago that were positively nightmarish.
If AIDS is actually curable, I would bet that all other STD would explode in the short term
Aiming for 'less sexual activity' is a very bad goal. Abstinence is harmful. The tremendous health benefits of sexual activity are myriad. The amount of research backing up the idea that modern society is dangerously sexless is huge. One of my favorites was a study of ALL men, across all ages, socioeconomic groups, everything, of an entire town I believe somewhere in northern Scotland (maybe Ireland?)... those who had the most frequent orgasms had a 50% lower chance of having died of any cause over the 15 year period of their study. They also had very significantly reduced incidence of heart disease, cancer, and other health problems. But, of course, such things get reported as 'health benefits of sex' and not 'health dangers of abstinence' because they assume people are abstinent by default which is ludicrous. We'll know if public sentiment is changing when the headlines change.
There seems to be a causality, but to me it is not obvious, what its direction is. The most healthy men, are probably also the most attractive.
We could have evolved to have a 'mating season' as almost all animals have. We could have evolved for females to give visible indication of fertility. We could have saved "wasting" the positively monumental amount of energy we pour into pursuing sex. We could have evolved so that sex was not even pleasurable but driven by instinct. We didn't have to evolve women going through menopause (and living a substantial amount of time afterward). Almost every single facet of human sexuality, if viewed through the lens of "sex is for reproduction", looks nonsensical if not evolutionarily suicidal. But through the lens of "sex is primarily for pleasure and social bonding," every bit of it makes sense. It explains why we stuck together in groups, the only thing that let weak, slow, stupid chimps without fangs, claws, venom, natural armor, or other similar natural advantages (except maybe endurance) survive long enough to have our social environment provide pressure for brain development and development of speech. We stuck together to preserve access to sexual partners, because it was pleasurable, and it made us the most powerful species on the planet. It makes sense that those who 'needed' it more were the ones to pass on their genes the most often.
It is a reasonably simple, safe, and effective drug, so it really should be available from any PCP. However, some community physicians do not prescribe it for one reason or another. HIV/STD clinics are almost always happy to see HIV(-) patients who are interested in PrEP.
So what you're saying is, they don't always have sex, but when they do it's unprotected? That sounds pretty normal to me.
I mean, on the net you'll often hear stories about kids scoring big but that's survivor bias. You don't hear anything from those who didn't bang.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/no-sex-please-were-mill... [2] http://time.com/4435058/millennials-virgins-sex/
could be but those two things needn't be mutually exclusive. maybe the youth is just more extreme in both directions whereas earlier people might have been more similar.
And while condom use has fallen a little since its height, it still remains significantly higher amongst the young than any older generation or group.
[0] http://www.nationalsexstudy.indiana.edu/ [1] http://www.nationalsexstudy.indiana.edu/condomgraph.html
Americans please correct me, but here it's more symptomatic with sexual health: You have a rash/etc, so you go see the doctor. There's no early-detection system where you are reminded to get into a clinic every 2-3 months and get a full test (blood test, swabs, etc) for all the usual suspects: HIV, herpes, chlamydia, etc.
The real solution will be when you have male birth control available as well; and then it comes down to only having sex with people you trust. I great partner is better than a bunch of lousy partners anyways.
I'm 29, and so far every woman I've fucked, I ended up deciding I didn't want to marry / have children with. But that's still on the table like it is for the vast majority of men, so vasectomy is not an option.
"Shit, I got HIV/warts from hooking up" just isn't something I ever heard in uni. It just isn't part of the discourse. Those just don't seem to penetrate the uni bubble.
But everyone I know had to deal with the clap.
If one assumes that the different strains also compete against each other the total number of infections may not go down much, and if it does, that may only be temporarily.
We still haven't come close to "eradicating" or curing HIV/AIDS; the issue lies in the virus' insidious biology. HIV is a retrovirus, meaning it incorporates into the target cell's genome, specifically CD4+ T-cells. An obvious barrier to "only" 1% of virions is that an infected person produces billions of virus particles every single day[2]. A less obvious barrier is the "latent" reservoir of the virus in cells.
Essentially, not all cells with an incorporated HIV genome are producing virus, and thus these proviruses can evade detection. A 2013 paper in cell[3] provides what I think is the most devastating example of this. Basically, an idea that has gained more traction lately has been to activate these T-cells, thus alerting the immune system and hopefully clearing the virus. It turns out that not all cells are activated, and the size of this reservoir is ~60X larger than previously thought.
When it comes to something like cancer, we often define "cure" or "beating it" differently — look no further than Randall Munroe's heartbreaking visualization, Lanes.[4] We need to do something similar for HIV. We can't get rid of the virus, but we're already pretty good at making life not so bad if you have it. Access and affordability are larger barriers to preventing mortality/morbidity.
There's also a quiet undercurrent that a standard vaccine for HIV is biologically impossible, but that's for another day.
tl;dr HIV sucks but we're okay at managing it. 99% sounds good but it's probably not enough.
1: Read: moderately well-off people with health insurance in wealthy, industrialized nations.
2: DOI: 10.1038/nrg1246 The oft-cited rule of the thumb is that every base of the viral genome is mutated every day.
3: DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.09.020 This one is absolutely worth reading.
Isn't it pretty weird that, despite this massive diversity, infections seem to be only caused a single, or sometimes a few, distinct virus particle(s):
>"we show that 78% of infections involved single variant transmission and 22% involved multiple variant transmissions (median of 3)" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19193811
To me that means something is horribly wrong with our understanding of HIV.
This is assuming that we can get the vaccine to everyone. In first world countries with developed and trusted this is mostly possible, but would still be a massive undertaking.
For example, a measles vaccine doesn't work on a small percentage of the population. Herd immunity says though that as long as some large percentage of the population is immune, those which the vaccine do not work will be fine. The anti-vaxx people end up pushing the percentage vaccinated below what's required for herd immunity and hose the whole population. Idiots.
Vaccinations are indeed something of an affront to one's physical person. So is collecting DNA evidence. I think that you will find upon further reflection that the physical integrity of one's body is not much affected by a vaccination, and that personal liberties do not extend to causing grievous bodily harm to others.
That's your takeaway from this interesting news? I don't understand how you jumped from this article to immediately drawing some opinions about sexual responsibility and behavior. The article has nothing to do with sex behavior, and HIV is hardly the sole deterrent for reckless sex.
At least, that's where the idea of tying sexuality to economic considerations like 'responsibility' and phrases like 'saving yourself' come from.
Obviously people mean the economic term. Couldn't possibly be the everyday meaning.
Are you implying that unprotected sex is bad in itself?
Edit: It was an honest question.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
But... it was a question...
The topic is sensitive and you will see a lot of people hide their moral beliefs behind "health concerns".
I'd rather make a blunt and direct question rather than play hide and seek and be lured into a masqueraded conversation about morals and believes.
Which is why I addressed this in the next sentence:
> If you have an honest question that will move the discussion productively forward, please, by all means ask it.
Does it move the discussion productively forward? What is the motivation for your question? Where do you expect the discussion to go from here? This isn't a question like "Where's the post office?" where the expected response is likely the effective end of the conversation. You're asking about morality. Do you think your parent has the same values as you? Are you looking to tease out some difference so you can argue about them? Show them that they're wrong? Find some points of agreement? Solve some underlying common issue? HN really isn't the place for general ideological debates. They're by definition off-topic. And regardless of what another has commented, we can show restraint and not continue a thread that is wandering off into incendiary weeds.
Edit (in reply to your addendum above): It does seem clear that you're looking for some kind of argument. Please don't. Let the thread die on the vine.
I don't intend to continue this any further. I do encourage you to review the link I provided, and perhaps review the recently updated HN guidelines, which includes similar points.
Yes.
> What is the motivation for your question?
To know if we are discussing about public health issues or moral believes. If it is the later, then there is no point continuing the discussion.
> Where do you expect the discussion to go from here?
If the motivation behind his comment was morals, then I don't expect the discussion to go anywhere. It is a dead end.
If it is about public health, we can continue the discussion.
You are doing the exact same thing you are accusing me of. It would be a good time to follow your advice: "Please default to the strongest possible interpretation of another's comment. Give them the benefit of the doubt."
As I mentioned all I wanted to know is if he is trying to have a discussion about morals or public health. Because if it is the first then I don't want to be part of the discussion.
(Edit in response to your edit) You are starting an argument on my post, and when I reply to your argument you make a passive aggressive edit to your post accusing me of not dropping the argument. And you drop it, by making a non-reply reply?
When I see that a discussion is not progressing constructively (as I observed from your first response to me), I try to make clear in a response that am indeed dropping the thread: I'm not interested in tit-for-tat back and forth, and know that it takes both parties to work toward a common goal for such discussions to be productive: I'm as much responsible as any other party. I do hope you find the constructive discussion you're looking for, and apologize for taking this off-topic as far as it has.
You offered unsolicited advice. I didn't take it personally, I tried to reply with arguments.
> I'm not interested in tit-for-tat back and forth
Just because I don't agree with the arguments you make it doesn't mean I have anything personal with you or that it is tit-for-tat or don't like conversing with you. Quite the opposite, the more difficult and challenging your arguments are, the more I enjoy the conversation.
Edit: Removed the "I am having doubts if you were interested in an open discussion in the first place." Please disregard it.