Cases of chlamydia and gonorrhoea have
doubled in the general population in the last five years,
but went up half as much again among women aged 16-19 and men aged 20-24.
Syphilis, previously rare, increased sixfold among young men during the
same period and 16-fold among young gay men.
Thankfully, this isn't the case with HIV. There's a bit of a myth that
HIV has increased among young people alongside the other STIs, or will
inevitably do so. In fact the median age at HIV diagnosis has increased
by about five years since 1995. Just two per cent of those diagnosed with
sexually-acquired HIV were under 20 last year, even among young gay men.
This proportion has not changed a jot since 1995.
And it isn't that surprising. If other STIs are bullets, HIV is more like
an inaccurately-thrown cricket ball - it can still kill if it hits you,
but 99 times out of 100 it will miss. In a situation where the average
viral load among people with HIV has gone down, it takes on average more
sexual exposures to get it, so even if you don't know the meaning of safer
sex you'll probably escape HIV till you're older. This doesn't mean that
HIV is not a very serious message to include in safer sex advice for teenagers,
but it does mean that we shouldn't base our safer-sex strategy on it.
The other thing not to base a safer-sex strategy on is abstention. We
bemoan the UK teen pregnancy figures, but in the land of St Britney the
Virginal and 'save yourself till later', twice the number of US teenagers
get pregnant as here. Just Say No has worked no better for sex than for
drugs.
So what does work? What must the government's safer-sex media campaign,
due
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