O
This is completely unacceptable. I was listening to Focus on the Family's radio broadcast and this is what was discussed: http://www.familylife.com/site/apps...FoG&b=3832113&ct=8035655&from=hpbrooadcastbox.
I copied the transcript and pasted it below for your convenience. Absolutely ridiculous. *shakes head* And yes, I did search CDC. I guess I will need to ask my future-wife-to-be to have a blood test with me now. How stupid is that?
[------- transcript -------]
Bob: When it comes to the issue of sexually transmitted diseases and teenagers, we live in a culture where there is mixed messages being sent. Here is Dr. Meg Meeker.
Dr. Meeker: Can you imagine if we had an immunization that came out to prevent lung cancer in kids, but we allowed cigarette companies to continue to promote them amongst our youth. The country would be out of their minds, crazy. Here we have an immunization that the American Academy of Pediatrics is telling all pediatricians to start immunizing young girls as early as 9 years of age. We are living in a culture that continues to pummel our kids with sexual messages.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, March 15th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. You are going to hear today what parents need to do to send the message loud and clear that premarital sex can be hazardous to your health.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today and thanks for joining us. I think that most of our listeners have heard at some point that the fable, the parable about the frog in the pot and the kettle.
Dennis: Right!
Bob: And how when you put a frog in; if you put him in the boiling water, he will jump right out, but if you put him into the water is lukewarm and you slowly turn up the heat; he will just cook to death, because he adapts and he gradually takes on the characteristics of the water.
The subject we are going to be talking about today is does feel like we are in the middle of boiling water and nobody is aware that we are cooking on this one. Do you know what I mean?
Dennis: I think what we are about to do is throw the parents into the pot and they are going to hop out real quick. They are going to get the point, because we have someone who has knowledge of more than just a few facts of how hot the water is and what a serious crisis we have today, especially among our teenagers when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases. And Bob, we probably need to give our listeners a disclaimer at this point.
Bob: Well, just by introducing that subject I think listeners know that we are going to be talking, appropriately, but candidly about the issue of STDs and teenage sexuality and it may be inappropriate for younger listeners. So, moms and dads you will want to make the decision about whether the children who might be within earshot should be around as you listen to today’s program.
Dennis: That’s right! And we have a pediatrician, Dr. Meg Meeker, who joins us on FamilyLife Today. Meg has been on the program before. Welcome back, Meg!
Dr. Meeker: Thank you, Dennis! Great to be here!
Dennis: Meg is a mom of four and she has written six books. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Dateline, with Katie Couric, The Today Show, The O’Reilly Factor, and she has written a book called, Your Kids at Risk: How Teen Sex Threatens our Sons and Daughters.
I like this book, Meg, because you talk honestly and frankly; not only about the crisis, but also about the solution. You begin the book saying, “what I am about to share with you is going to shock you. It is going to make you afraid!”
I can say it is going to make you ashamed that we as parents don’t really understand what is taking place in our culture today. Explain as a pediatrician, what you begin to see. In fact you actually described it as a series of small explosions that occurred in your clinic.
Dr. Meeker: YES! An implosion inside of me! I really did! You know I have been at this a while. I have been in medicine for over 20 years. I have worked in inner cities. I used to work in ‘Teen and Tot Clinics’ many, many years ago and I really enjoyed it. The teens and pregnancy, I kind of got tired of that.
I thought, I want to go live in a nice suburban area where I don’t see any of this kind of stuff and parents read child care books and mothers are struggling with breast feeding, so I really tried to escape. I went to a small mid-western town and what I saw over the past 20 years and the changes in the sexual behavior, and the infections amongst younger, younger kids; and the infections that I was seeing in kids that I knew that were my kid’s friends. I was taking care of my friend’s kids in this small town.
Dennis: From good homes?
Dr. Meeker: Good homes! Not the troubled kids. I am not talking about the troubled kids. I started to see what I saw in these inner cities and in the troubled kids years before creeping into my ‘Middle American practice.’ I was very, very disturbed. I was seeing things like early cervical cancer. I was seeing Genital Herpes infections in young kids.
Bob: How young? What are you talking about?
Dr. Meeker: 12 to 13 years old.
Bob: Oh my goodness!
Dr. Meeker: Yes! I was so outraged that I decided to do some research on this. What really tipped me over the edge and what prompted me to write the book was I had a baby delivered to a 27 year old couple, lovely couple; and the second day of life the baby began having seizures, a very healthy baby, and I asked mom and dad what ?.... “Did you take any drugs, did you smoke anything?” The mom said, “No, I swear up and down nothing was wrong, I had no infections.”
We did an MRI of the baby’s brain and found that it had little holes in it. There are only a few things that cause that. I knew the baby had Herpes, genital Herpes infection that was causing these holes in the baby’s brain.
I went back to mom and dad and said, “I know what is going on here, which of you has Herpes?” And mom said, “I don’t have Genital Herpes.” And dad says, “When I was 17 I had a girl friend, but I didn’t tell my wife and I have always been safe with my wife so I have always protected her.” And sure enough, the Herpes that he got when he was 17 from one girl friend was what was causing the seizures and the severe brain damage in this baby. That was the first time mom had learned about it.
I went home that night and I was sitting there watching television with my kids and an advertisement came on the TV; it was a young couple kayaking down a river and a voice over came on that said, “Now, you no longer have to let Genital Herpes interfere with your life.” And that was it....I exploded! I said, “Wait a minute! Herpes doesn’t interfere with your life? I have this baby in the hospital who was dying because of a Herpes infection! Why doesn’t somebody tell the kids out there that having sex when you are a teenager is extremely, extremely dangerous?”
That is what prompted my research and prompted me writing this book, because I felt every single parent of a child in America needs to know what kids are facing, because it is not the 1970’s, the 1980’s or even the 1990’s any more as far as the sexual landscape of our youth. It is very, very different.
Dennis: I heard from a friend who is a researcher that back I the 60’s and 70’s there were five known sexually transmitted diseases in the culture. He said that today there are 50!
Dr. Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: Now, is that accurate?
Dr. Meeker: It is very accurate. Actually it depends on how you count. We could say there are a whole lot more. If you take, for instance, human papiloma virus – HPv, which causes cervical cancer, there are 80 to 100 strains of HPv alone. Now, only about a dozen of those cause cancer, but do we say HPv is one infection? Or do we say it is 12 infections? Or do we count it as 80 infections? So, it really depends on how you count. And we only learned that HPv causes cervical cancer in the 1990’s.
Many times people say, “Well if they are out there...why don’t we know about it?” A lot of the sex education programs in schools are very outdated, because many of them have to go through government screening and regulations and so forth and things are changing so fast that even the medical community has difficulty keeping up with the numbers here.
Bob: Here is what I remember about STDs and learning when I was growing up...I remember hearing that there were two; Syphilis and Gonorrhea.
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Bob: If they were untreated you could go crazy, but now there are drugs that can treat them and you will be okay.
Dr Meeker: A shot of Penicillin and you are all set.
Bob: That is what I remember. I thought, “Well, I don’t want to get anything that caused me to go crazy, but I am glad that they have a drug that will treat it.” That’s the education that I got about STDs. You are saying, today, the landscape is completely different than that and kids aren’t hearing the truth about STDs?
Dr Meeker: NO! No! They are not! You know, I wanted to clarify something; people hear abstinence education vs comprehensive safe-sex education. There is a lot of misunderstanding about that.
Abstinence is advertised by those who don’t teach it that it is inaccurate medically and it withholds information and nothing could be further from the truth. It tells the truth about what condoms reduce the risk of and what they don’t reduce the risk of. It is really important to know the numbers.
I have been in practice over 20 years and when I finished residency, I never saw Aids. I didn’t see Herpes very much and you know we just didn’t see a lot of what we see now. People ask, “Where did all these germs come from?” We can actually track them.
We can track them to a couple of things; we track them to when the birth-control pill came out in the 60’s and then in the late 60’s and early 70’s women said, “You know, if guys are doing it then we want to do it too, we are going to be feminists. We are going to throw the doors wide open.” It started the ‘Sexual Revolution!’
As our generation propelled the Sexual Revolution forward, there was only Chlamydia and Gonorrhea and so we sort of “got by” okay, but what happened then is we threw all of these other infections that came about because of multiple partners and this ‘Free Sex’ on to the next generation.
So this really, truly is a burden that we have unloaded on our kids and many times as I speak to kids around the country, I apologize to them on behalf of my generation. I say, “I am sorry that we threw this on you. This is not your fault, but this is what you have to contend with. Many of your parents are not going to address this with you, because they still think that it is 1975. They got by and they say you will get by too. That is not the truth!
Dennis: Yes! They may have not caused it, but it is their responsibility to be able to handle it today. It is pervasive! If you have a stadium; let’s take the Rose bowl that will seat more than a hundred thousand people, and let’s say you have a hundred-thousand teenagers in the Rose Bowl, how many of those hundred-thousand would have a sexually transmitted disease by the time they graduate from High School?
Dr Meeker: We know that at least 20,000 of those students will have an STD.
Bob: One in five?
Dr Meeker: One in Five!
Bob: I am at my High School and I am walking down the hall; every fifth kid I am seeing likely has an STD?
Dr Meeker: Yes! Would likely have something! Now, that is the data that I put in my book that came out a few years ago that number has now jumped to one in four. It used to be 1 in 4 just for sexually active teens, now it is 1 in 4 for teens across the board. This is how quickly things are changing!
In the early turn of the century, the 21st century, 15 million Americans every year contracted a new sexually transmitted infection. Now, in 2009, that 15 million is up to One Hundred Million in just that short period!
Here is what is so disturbing to me; a little over half of that 20 million is in the young people; in people under 20. People under 20 do not make up half of the population in the United States. They make up about 1/3 of that. So 1/3 of the kids are carrying ½ of the infections. This is disproportionately contemplated on a young people and they need to know this because the numbers are rising.
For those who say, “Oh, we will just teach our kids about condoms and comprehensive safe sex education works.” We have been teaching that to our kids for almost 20 years and in the midst of that disease rates have gone up and up and up and up.
Dennis: You write in your book; now this is an astounding and a chilling number that 45 million Americans are infected with Herpes.
Dr Meeker: Yes! Type 2 alone! Herpes Type 2 is Genital Herpes. Type 1 is Lip Herpes. What you are referring to is just Herpes Type 2 alone.
Dennis: 45 Million Americans!
Dr Meeker: 1 out of 5 Americans over the age 12 test positive for Genital Herpes. And that is according to the New England Journal of Medicine. This is hard rock science! It is indisputable science.
Dennis: So, here we are, we are watching TV and we have all of these shows on TV that show ‘Free Sex.’
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: .... people who are just shacking up and sleeping with each other and they can almost assume that 1 out of every 4 people they sleep with is going to be infected with that.
Dr Meeker: Something!
Dennis: With a Sexually Transmitted Disease?
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: Which means, statistically they are likely to get it too, right?
Dr Meeker: You got it! I tell kids that if you have had over 2 partners you have got something. And kids will say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah ... but Dr Meeker, I don’t have the symptoms, I don’t see anything wrong. I tell them, “Over 80% of the time when you have an infection there are no symptoms. There are no symptoms to HP-v! Often there are no symptoms.
For instance, this young gal who delivered the baby with Genital Herpes, didn’t know she had it because she never had a symptom, but she still had the virus. And this is an enormous problem because many people who have an infection even Aids-HIV have no symptoms for a long time.
Bob: But, if I have got an STD and no symptoms, then I am thinking, “Well okay, so I have got some infection with no symptoms.....
Dr Meeker: Exactly!
Bob: So, what’s the problem?
Dr Meeker: The big deal is that Herpes cannot be killed. We can keep it at bay with certain medications. Once you have it you have it for life! And you will have sores that break out! It affects child-bearing; it affected this baby.
Dennis: Did that baby live?
Dr Meeker: That baby lived! I still have that baby in our practice. Fifty percent of the time a baby is born to a mother who has had her first outbreak; if you will, but she didn’t even really have an outbreak. The first serious infection of Herpes; 50% of time those babies die! The other 50% of the time babies live, but they usually have some type of brain injury like my patient has.
Dennis: So, this baby is severely handicapped?
Dr Meeker: Yes but is older today.
Dennis: Okay! Let’s talk about HPv as a disease. There is now a serum, a shot that you can give.
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: A young lady...... I am going to put that question to you...not as a physician, but as a mom, would you have your daughters take that shot?
Dr Meeker: If they are 9 or 10 or 15 – NO! If they are adults and they are not sexually active – Yes! And here is why I say that. I know that we might get a lot of mail about this.
Guardasil protects 2 of the strains of HPv that can cause cervical cancer and; two, which cause warts. That doesn’t insure that they are going to be prevented from getting the cervical cancer, it just helps. I always tell girls that. I feel pretty confident as a mother and as a pediatrician, that I can help girls remain abstinent until they are married. Because many of the girls in my practice say that once they commit to it, it is not that hard. Particularly once they get older.
I have seen this happen. Now my patient or daughter goes and marries a guy who is in his 20’s, but he had a partner when he was 15,16, or 17 and maybe another partner; maybe a one night stand..... he will give that girl HPv. And I want her protected. So, unless I can be assured that her husband is a virgin and she is a virgin, she won’t need any kind of Guardasil. But, if you can’t be assured that the husband is a virgin, than you feel that the daughter should be protected.
Dennis: Isn’t this an interesting age which we are alive? I mean think about it.
Dr Meeker: We have gone mad!
Dennis: That we are talking about this as adults about protecting our daughters, because the culture has such a pervasive epidemic of Sexually Transmitted Diseases that we even have to have this conversation; to think about protecting our daughters around, ‘what ifs.’
Bob: Well, in fact as you are talking about that I am thinking about when the Swine Flu outbreak was on the front page on all of the newspapers and magazines; nobody was going to go to Mexico and we are all up in arms about Swine Flu. And there were just a handful of Swine Flu cases reported. Why hasn’t the CDC or the National Institute of Health – why isn’t every news magazine screaming that we have an STD epidemic?
I copied the transcript and pasted it below for your convenience. Absolutely ridiculous. *shakes head* And yes, I did search CDC. I guess I will need to ask my future-wife-to-be to have a blood test with me now. How stupid is that?
[------- transcript -------]
Bob: When it comes to the issue of sexually transmitted diseases and teenagers, we live in a culture where there is mixed messages being sent. Here is Dr. Meg Meeker.
Dr. Meeker: Can you imagine if we had an immunization that came out to prevent lung cancer in kids, but we allowed cigarette companies to continue to promote them amongst our youth. The country would be out of their minds, crazy. Here we have an immunization that the American Academy of Pediatrics is telling all pediatricians to start immunizing young girls as early as 9 years of age. We are living in a culture that continues to pummel our kids with sexual messages.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, March 15th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. You are going to hear today what parents need to do to send the message loud and clear that premarital sex can be hazardous to your health.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today and thanks for joining us. I think that most of our listeners have heard at some point that the fable, the parable about the frog in the pot and the kettle.
Dennis: Right!
Bob: And how when you put a frog in; if you put him in the boiling water, he will jump right out, but if you put him into the water is lukewarm and you slowly turn up the heat; he will just cook to death, because he adapts and he gradually takes on the characteristics of the water.
The subject we are going to be talking about today is does feel like we are in the middle of boiling water and nobody is aware that we are cooking on this one. Do you know what I mean?
Dennis: I think what we are about to do is throw the parents into the pot and they are going to hop out real quick. They are going to get the point, because we have someone who has knowledge of more than just a few facts of how hot the water is and what a serious crisis we have today, especially among our teenagers when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases. And Bob, we probably need to give our listeners a disclaimer at this point.
Bob: Well, just by introducing that subject I think listeners know that we are going to be talking, appropriately, but candidly about the issue of STDs and teenage sexuality and it may be inappropriate for younger listeners. So, moms and dads you will want to make the decision about whether the children who might be within earshot should be around as you listen to today’s program.
Dennis: That’s right! And we have a pediatrician, Dr. Meg Meeker, who joins us on FamilyLife Today. Meg has been on the program before. Welcome back, Meg!
Dr. Meeker: Thank you, Dennis! Great to be here!
Dennis: Meg is a mom of four and she has written six books. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Dateline, with Katie Couric, The Today Show, The O’Reilly Factor, and she has written a book called, Your Kids at Risk: How Teen Sex Threatens our Sons and Daughters.
I like this book, Meg, because you talk honestly and frankly; not only about the crisis, but also about the solution. You begin the book saying, “what I am about to share with you is going to shock you. It is going to make you afraid!”
I can say it is going to make you ashamed that we as parents don’t really understand what is taking place in our culture today. Explain as a pediatrician, what you begin to see. In fact you actually described it as a series of small explosions that occurred in your clinic.
Dr. Meeker: YES! An implosion inside of me! I really did! You know I have been at this a while. I have been in medicine for over 20 years. I have worked in inner cities. I used to work in ‘Teen and Tot Clinics’ many, many years ago and I really enjoyed it. The teens and pregnancy, I kind of got tired of that.
I thought, I want to go live in a nice suburban area where I don’t see any of this kind of stuff and parents read child care books and mothers are struggling with breast feeding, so I really tried to escape. I went to a small mid-western town and what I saw over the past 20 years and the changes in the sexual behavior, and the infections amongst younger, younger kids; and the infections that I was seeing in kids that I knew that were my kid’s friends. I was taking care of my friend’s kids in this small town.
Dennis: From good homes?
Dr. Meeker: Good homes! Not the troubled kids. I am not talking about the troubled kids. I started to see what I saw in these inner cities and in the troubled kids years before creeping into my ‘Middle American practice.’ I was very, very disturbed. I was seeing things like early cervical cancer. I was seeing Genital Herpes infections in young kids.
Bob: How young? What are you talking about?
Dr. Meeker: 12 to 13 years old.
Bob: Oh my goodness!
Dr. Meeker: Yes! I was so outraged that I decided to do some research on this. What really tipped me over the edge and what prompted me to write the book was I had a baby delivered to a 27 year old couple, lovely couple; and the second day of life the baby began having seizures, a very healthy baby, and I asked mom and dad what ?.... “Did you take any drugs, did you smoke anything?” The mom said, “No, I swear up and down nothing was wrong, I had no infections.”
We did an MRI of the baby’s brain and found that it had little holes in it. There are only a few things that cause that. I knew the baby had Herpes, genital Herpes infection that was causing these holes in the baby’s brain.
I went back to mom and dad and said, “I know what is going on here, which of you has Herpes?” And mom said, “I don’t have Genital Herpes.” And dad says, “When I was 17 I had a girl friend, but I didn’t tell my wife and I have always been safe with my wife so I have always protected her.” And sure enough, the Herpes that he got when he was 17 from one girl friend was what was causing the seizures and the severe brain damage in this baby. That was the first time mom had learned about it.
I went home that night and I was sitting there watching television with my kids and an advertisement came on the TV; it was a young couple kayaking down a river and a voice over came on that said, “Now, you no longer have to let Genital Herpes interfere with your life.” And that was it....I exploded! I said, “Wait a minute! Herpes doesn’t interfere with your life? I have this baby in the hospital who was dying because of a Herpes infection! Why doesn’t somebody tell the kids out there that having sex when you are a teenager is extremely, extremely dangerous?”
That is what prompted my research and prompted me writing this book, because I felt every single parent of a child in America needs to know what kids are facing, because it is not the 1970’s, the 1980’s or even the 1990’s any more as far as the sexual landscape of our youth. It is very, very different.
Dennis: I heard from a friend who is a researcher that back I the 60’s and 70’s there were five known sexually transmitted diseases in the culture. He said that today there are 50!
Dr. Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: Now, is that accurate?
Dr. Meeker: It is very accurate. Actually it depends on how you count. We could say there are a whole lot more. If you take, for instance, human papiloma virus – HPv, which causes cervical cancer, there are 80 to 100 strains of HPv alone. Now, only about a dozen of those cause cancer, but do we say HPv is one infection? Or do we say it is 12 infections? Or do we count it as 80 infections? So, it really depends on how you count. And we only learned that HPv causes cervical cancer in the 1990’s.
Many times people say, “Well if they are out there...why don’t we know about it?” A lot of the sex education programs in schools are very outdated, because many of them have to go through government screening and regulations and so forth and things are changing so fast that even the medical community has difficulty keeping up with the numbers here.
Bob: Here is what I remember about STDs and learning when I was growing up...I remember hearing that there were two; Syphilis and Gonorrhea.
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Bob: If they were untreated you could go crazy, but now there are drugs that can treat them and you will be okay.
Dr Meeker: A shot of Penicillin and you are all set.
Bob: That is what I remember. I thought, “Well, I don’t want to get anything that caused me to go crazy, but I am glad that they have a drug that will treat it.” That’s the education that I got about STDs. You are saying, today, the landscape is completely different than that and kids aren’t hearing the truth about STDs?
Dr Meeker: NO! No! They are not! You know, I wanted to clarify something; people hear abstinence education vs comprehensive safe-sex education. There is a lot of misunderstanding about that.
Abstinence is advertised by those who don’t teach it that it is inaccurate medically and it withholds information and nothing could be further from the truth. It tells the truth about what condoms reduce the risk of and what they don’t reduce the risk of. It is really important to know the numbers.
I have been in practice over 20 years and when I finished residency, I never saw Aids. I didn’t see Herpes very much and you know we just didn’t see a lot of what we see now. People ask, “Where did all these germs come from?” We can actually track them.
We can track them to a couple of things; we track them to when the birth-control pill came out in the 60’s and then in the late 60’s and early 70’s women said, “You know, if guys are doing it then we want to do it too, we are going to be feminists. We are going to throw the doors wide open.” It started the ‘Sexual Revolution!’
As our generation propelled the Sexual Revolution forward, there was only Chlamydia and Gonorrhea and so we sort of “got by” okay, but what happened then is we threw all of these other infections that came about because of multiple partners and this ‘Free Sex’ on to the next generation.
So this really, truly is a burden that we have unloaded on our kids and many times as I speak to kids around the country, I apologize to them on behalf of my generation. I say, “I am sorry that we threw this on you. This is not your fault, but this is what you have to contend with. Many of your parents are not going to address this with you, because they still think that it is 1975. They got by and they say you will get by too. That is not the truth!
Dennis: Yes! They may have not caused it, but it is their responsibility to be able to handle it today. It is pervasive! If you have a stadium; let’s take the Rose bowl that will seat more than a hundred thousand people, and let’s say you have a hundred-thousand teenagers in the Rose Bowl, how many of those hundred-thousand would have a sexually transmitted disease by the time they graduate from High School?
Dr Meeker: We know that at least 20,000 of those students will have an STD.
Bob: One in five?
Dr Meeker: One in Five!
Bob: I am at my High School and I am walking down the hall; every fifth kid I am seeing likely has an STD?
Dr Meeker: Yes! Would likely have something! Now, that is the data that I put in my book that came out a few years ago that number has now jumped to one in four. It used to be 1 in 4 just for sexually active teens, now it is 1 in 4 for teens across the board. This is how quickly things are changing!
In the early turn of the century, the 21st century, 15 million Americans every year contracted a new sexually transmitted infection. Now, in 2009, that 15 million is up to One Hundred Million in just that short period!
Here is what is so disturbing to me; a little over half of that 20 million is in the young people; in people under 20. People under 20 do not make up half of the population in the United States. They make up about 1/3 of that. So 1/3 of the kids are carrying ½ of the infections. This is disproportionately contemplated on a young people and they need to know this because the numbers are rising.
For those who say, “Oh, we will just teach our kids about condoms and comprehensive safe sex education works.” We have been teaching that to our kids for almost 20 years and in the midst of that disease rates have gone up and up and up and up.
Dennis: You write in your book; now this is an astounding and a chilling number that 45 million Americans are infected with Herpes.
Dr Meeker: Yes! Type 2 alone! Herpes Type 2 is Genital Herpes. Type 1 is Lip Herpes. What you are referring to is just Herpes Type 2 alone.
Dennis: 45 Million Americans!
Dr Meeker: 1 out of 5 Americans over the age 12 test positive for Genital Herpes. And that is according to the New England Journal of Medicine. This is hard rock science! It is indisputable science.
Dennis: So, here we are, we are watching TV and we have all of these shows on TV that show ‘Free Sex.’
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: .... people who are just shacking up and sleeping with each other and they can almost assume that 1 out of every 4 people they sleep with is going to be infected with that.
Dr Meeker: Something!
Dennis: With a Sexually Transmitted Disease?
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: Which means, statistically they are likely to get it too, right?
Dr Meeker: You got it! I tell kids that if you have had over 2 partners you have got something. And kids will say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah ... but Dr Meeker, I don’t have the symptoms, I don’t see anything wrong. I tell them, “Over 80% of the time when you have an infection there are no symptoms. There are no symptoms to HP-v! Often there are no symptoms.
For instance, this young gal who delivered the baby with Genital Herpes, didn’t know she had it because she never had a symptom, but she still had the virus. And this is an enormous problem because many people who have an infection even Aids-HIV have no symptoms for a long time.
Bob: But, if I have got an STD and no symptoms, then I am thinking, “Well okay, so I have got some infection with no symptoms.....
Dr Meeker: Exactly!
Bob: So, what’s the problem?
Dr Meeker: The big deal is that Herpes cannot be killed. We can keep it at bay with certain medications. Once you have it you have it for life! And you will have sores that break out! It affects child-bearing; it affected this baby.
Dennis: Did that baby live?
Dr Meeker: That baby lived! I still have that baby in our practice. Fifty percent of the time a baby is born to a mother who has had her first outbreak; if you will, but she didn’t even really have an outbreak. The first serious infection of Herpes; 50% of time those babies die! The other 50% of the time babies live, but they usually have some type of brain injury like my patient has.
Dennis: So, this baby is severely handicapped?
Dr Meeker: Yes but is older today.
Dennis: Okay! Let’s talk about HPv as a disease. There is now a serum, a shot that you can give.
Dr Meeker: Yes!
Dennis: A young lady...... I am going to put that question to you...not as a physician, but as a mom, would you have your daughters take that shot?
Dr Meeker: If they are 9 or 10 or 15 – NO! If they are adults and they are not sexually active – Yes! And here is why I say that. I know that we might get a lot of mail about this.
Guardasil protects 2 of the strains of HPv that can cause cervical cancer and; two, which cause warts. That doesn’t insure that they are going to be prevented from getting the cervical cancer, it just helps. I always tell girls that. I feel pretty confident as a mother and as a pediatrician, that I can help girls remain abstinent until they are married. Because many of the girls in my practice say that once they commit to it, it is not that hard. Particularly once they get older.
I have seen this happen. Now my patient or daughter goes and marries a guy who is in his 20’s, but he had a partner when he was 15,16, or 17 and maybe another partner; maybe a one night stand..... he will give that girl HPv. And I want her protected. So, unless I can be assured that her husband is a virgin and she is a virgin, she won’t need any kind of Guardasil. But, if you can’t be assured that the husband is a virgin, than you feel that the daughter should be protected.
Dennis: Isn’t this an interesting age which we are alive? I mean think about it.
Dr Meeker: We have gone mad!
Dennis: That we are talking about this as adults about protecting our daughters, because the culture has such a pervasive epidemic of Sexually Transmitted Diseases that we even have to have this conversation; to think about protecting our daughters around, ‘what ifs.’
Bob: Well, in fact as you are talking about that I am thinking about when the Swine Flu outbreak was on the front page on all of the newspapers and magazines; nobody was going to go to Mexico and we are all up in arms about Swine Flu. And there were just a handful of Swine Flu cases reported. Why hasn’t the CDC or the National Institute of Health – why isn’t every news magazine screaming that we have an STD epidemic?
