TheOtherView
Opinions from around the country

The U.S. syphilis rate is up this year for the first time in more than a decade. According to a story on ABCNEWS.com Friday, the national rate is 2.2 cases per 100,000 people. The rate in women has declined, but the rate in men has climbed significantly enough to raise the overall proportion. Numerically, there was a 15.4 percent jump in males.

This increase is disturbing. Syphilis is linked to HIV infection in several ways. First, people who engage in unsafe sex are automatically more likely to contract the diseases than those who are consistently safe. Second, syphilitic sores can compromise the skin’s integrity, leaving more opportunities for the HIV virus to invade the body.

At the same time, HIV infection lowers the body’s immune response and would make it much more likely that a person would contract syphilis or other communicable diseases. It comes as little surprise, then, that the HIV infection rate is on the rise again, too.

Diseases like syphilis are everyone’s problem, and preventing and curing them are everyone’s responsibility. People look at the statistics and scoff; how unlikely is it that you’ll ever come into sexual contact with one of those 2.2 people in 100,000? But it’s precisely that devil-may-care attitude that breeds disease and death. Yes, the numbers are higher in urban areas.

Yes, the numbers are astoundingly higher for men who have sex with men. But that doesn’t mean that anyone can afford to be sexually reckless and hope to walk away unharmed.

People always believe diseases like syphilis and AIDS are someone else’s problem, that it can’t happen to them. Until it does. This is 2002.

We knows the facts, we know the risks, and there is no excuse for not practicing safe sex. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to roll on a condom. Some faiths teach that using birth control and condoms is sinful. We disagree. We’re living in a time when debilitating and deadly diseases are on the rise again. Outside of mutually monogamous relationships, having sex without condoms is sinful.

We all have a moral obligation to educate ourselves and others about the real dangers associated with sex, and then to use our knowledge in our daily lives.

This is a staff editorial from the Indiana Statesman from Indiana State University.
This editorial is distributed by U-Wire.