1 in 4 NA women have HPV STD

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/health/28hpv.html

Women ages 20 to 24 had the highest overall HPV prevalence in the study, 44.8 percent. Prevalence increased each year from ages 14 to 24, then dropped off gradually, confirming that young, sexually active women face the greatest risk.

WTH

This is absolute bullshit from the first word. There is NO way an STD can be THIS widespread.

Let's be SERIOUS here!

1 in 4 is like saying that all four have had sex. If some haven't, which I know they do exist, are those the 3 out of 4? Could that mean that they'd get HPV 100% of the time if they did have sex?


What is this? the new, hip disease, like West Nile, Bird Flu, SARS?

EDIT: yeah, AIDS don't belong there at all. My bad.

Sounds like more bull to sell that damn vaccine for HPV. Either that or more religious crap to stop young people from f***ing.

What is this? the new AIDS, West Nile, Bird Flu, SARS?

Does AIDS really belong with those other 3? AIDS is a real virus, the others are jokes. Hell the flu and common cold kill more people then the other 3 combined.

Csonicgo said:

This is absolute bullshit from the first word. There is NO way an STD can be THIS widespread.

and...why not? Because you don't want it to be?

1 in 4 is like saying that all four have had sex. If some haven't, which I know they do exist, are those the 3 out of 4? Could that mean that they'd get HPV 100% of the time if they did have sex?

The article doesn't mention if the women in the study are all sexually active or not. I would assume so simply based on the type of study it is. It would seem like a pretty stupid waste of time to test virgins for stds, no?

Scet said:

Sounds like more bull to sell that damn vaccine for HPV.

This. And, iirc, the state of texas wants to vaccine 5th grade girls in public schools with it. And I don't think too many people there are happy about it.

AIDS is a real virus, the others are jokes.

What? West Nile and SARS are indeed very real. I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Quast said:

and...why not? Because you don't want it to be?

Huh? I'm not even going to bother responding to this troll attempt.

Quast said:

The article doesn't mention if the women in the study are all sexually active or not. I would assume so simply based on the type of study it is. It would seem like a pretty stupid waste of time to test virgins for stds, no?

TFA didn't say anything about virgins. Just "women". If they didn't test virgins it could have been stated in the first paragraph. You shouldn't have to ASSUME anything in science. This is just a dumbed down article from the New York Times for their readers. The Reporter could have made a mistake in his words. But, if it's intentionally misleading, I have just lost a lot of trust in the New York Times.

Look, Here's a better Headline!

"1 in 4 Sexually Active Women Have HPV STD"

There we go!

Quast said:
What? West Nile and SARS are indeed very real. I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Yes I know they're real. However their symptoms and the chance of getting infected make them insignificant when compared to AIDS.

Quast said:
This. And, iirc, the state of texas wants to vaccine 5th grade girls in public schools with it. And I don't think too many people there are happy about it.

Unfortunatly from what I've seen on the news, the reason most parents aren't happy is that they're nutjobs who think giving them the vaccine will make their daughters want to be sexually active earilier. This is of course a retarded idea, since there are much worse STDs out there. Nobody seems to care though that the drug company is now making a fortune off of texas tax dollars.

Fear mongering = $$$

@CSG: And how the fuck does it matter if it was mentioned?

The "1 in 4" trick is a classic trick in statistics to make something look like a bigger deal than it actually is. I'm not saying that HPV isn't a big deal, but it is evident there is some biased reporting, OR bad summarization here. I'm hoping for the latter.

Scet said:

AIDS is a real virus, the others are jokes.

No it isn't, it's a syndrome. HIV is a virus.

HPVs cause genital warts, and if I remember correctly from 11th grade health class, that's one of the more widespread STDs. If the article is indeed only referring to "sexually active" women, then 25% is probably still a little high, but not terribly surprising.

Also, HPVs cause regular warts, which have nothing to do with sexual activity, and the article is really ambiguous about specifying which strains of HPV they're even talking about.

In short, it's a pretty loaded article.

Kid Airbag said:

HPVs cause genital warts, and if I remember correctly from 11th grade health class, that's one of the more widespread STDs. If the article is indeed only referring to "sexually active" women, then 25% is probably still a little high, but not terribly surprising.

Also, HPVs cause regular warts, which have nothing to do with sexual activity, and the article is really ambiguous about specifying which strains of HPV they're even talking about.

In short, it's a pretty loaded article.

Well, you also have to think about transmission from birth being included in the statistic, like people born with Herpes.

Csonicgo said:

I have just lost a lot of trust in the New York Times.

I'm sure you're an avid reader, and it's not like the NY Times haven't been pointed out as being non-trustworthy, oh say, a billion times.

Kid Airbag said:

HPVs cause genital warts, and if I remember correctly from 11th grade health class, that's one of the more widespread STDs. If the article is indeed only referring to "sexually active" women, then 25% is probably still a little high, but not terribly surprising.

Also, HPVs cause regular warts, which have nothing to do with sexual activity, and the article is really ambiguous about specifying which strains of HPV they're even talking about.

In short, it's a pretty loaded article.

From what I read in this article (or another one that I didn't link), it's referring to all women within the "typical ages of sexual activity" which is something like 14 to 59. So yeah, 26% of all women in that age group have this wart STD, and 45% of all women 20 to 24.

Apparently.

HPV is just a general type of virus. Not all HPV viruses cause visible symptoms (i.e. genital warts). So saying that 1/4 of sexually active females have some form of HPV virus in their system is not that remarkable.

Males carry HPVs also, rather it is publicised towards females because of the link to cervical cancer. Although there is research that is starting to arrive that suggests a link between some HPV strains and prostate cancer.

AndrewB said:

From what I read in this article (or another one that I didn't link), it's referring to all women within the "typical ages of sexual activity" which is something like 14 to 59. So yeah, 26% of all women in that age group have this wart STD, and 45% of all women 20 to 24.

Apparently.

This is shocking how?

Many millions of men and women have oral and genital herpes and have no idea at all. They don't even have symptoms but they shed the virus sometimes, infecting others, who may or may not have the same reaction and thus the chain continues.

It's not like what they are saying is impossible.

Thats right. You don't know you have something until there is a visible breakout.

Did you also know you have e.coli swarming inside you?, and you probably have MRSA (that antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' that is found in hospitals) living in your nose?

deathbringer said:

Did you also know you have e.coli swarming inside you?

A strain of it, yes. It helps absorb water in the large intestine. That's why people sometimes get diarrhea when taking antibiotics, as that stuff kills any kind of bacteria indescriminately.

In fact, only about .1% of bacteria is truly deadly. The rest is harmless or beneficial. Most virii aren't very deadly, either, as they're generally host specific.

Snarboo said:

virii

no

To the Romans a virus was a dangerous or disgusting substance, anything from snake venom to body odor. Ancient grammarians couldn't agree whether the word was a third-declension noun, a fourth-declension noun or in a class by itself, but the one thing they could agree on was that it didn't have a plural form. Ever. To the Romans, it was a mass noun, not a count noun. That hasn't stopped English writers from inventing pseudo-Latin plural forms to cover the modern countable senses of the word. Viri is formed on the false assumption that virus is a second-declension noun. (Viri in fact is the plural of Latin vir, "man".) Virii is an even worse mistake. Only Latin nouns that end in -ius form the plural with -ii. There are no really common English plurals in -ii other than radii. That hasn't stopped people from trying out such atrocious forms as virii and penii. Virii would be the plural of virius, if such a word existed in Latin. Other suggested plurals include virora, vira, virua, and vire. For more on the debate, see http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html. The one inescapable fact is that in classical Latin, there was no plural of the word. In English, the only correct plural is viruses.

But... it only affects women, right?

GGG said:

But... it only affects women, right?

No.

Well, at least I don't have to worry about cervical cancer.

Dr. Zin said:

Although there is research that is starting to arrive that suggests a link between some HPV strains and prostate cancer.

GGG said:

Well, at least I don't have to worry about cervical cancer.

Yeah, but you might have to worry about warts growing on your genitals.

Naked Snake said:

Yeah, but you might have to worry about warts growing on your genitals.

Reminds me of that guy in the medical freaks records who let the warts turn his dick into a French tickler.

Well that's better than the statistic that 80% of the population has an STD that my 12th grade health teacher told us. She then went on on to accuse at least a quarter of the class of having STDs even though we were all like 18 and probably a quarter of us virgins at least. She was a caffeine addicted feminazi though, so whatever.

Holy shit... my health teacher was exactly the same! She made health class so damn irritating!

Danarchy said:

Well that's better than the statistic that 80% of the population has an STD that my 12th grade health teacher told us. She then went on on to accuse at least a quarter of the class of having STDs even though we were all like 18 and probably a quarter of us virgins at least. She was a caffeine addicted feminazi though, so whatever.

She was probably just jealous she didn't lose her virginity until marriage. I think most (female) health teachers are like that.