The Dangerous Myth of the End of STIs
Sex will never be safe. Use protection.
For most of human history, sex has been unavoidably risky. Until the advent of modern biology, the mechanisms behind pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were poorly understood. And though humans have spent millennia tinkering with various methods of contraception and prophylactics, it wasn’t until the invention of the rubber condom in the mid-19th century that there was a consistent, effective method of reducing risk for both pregnancy and disease during sex.
Flash forward to 2019, however, and the landscape is wildly different. People looking to prevent pregnancy have a wide range of contraceptive options, including pills, patches, IUDs, implants, and vaginal rings. Antibiotics have made bacterial STIs like gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis a minor annoyance rather than a life-altering illness. A vaccine is available to protect against HPV, the virus that causes genital warts and several forms of cancer. Even HIV — the most deadly STI in recent history — has been downgraded from a certain death sentence to a manageable chronic illness, and a daily pill regimen for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, also known as truvada or PrEP, has made preventing HIV transmission a vastly easier prospect.
