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Guard Against VD PollutionAwake!—1972 | February 8
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“Greatest Threat to Teen-Age Health”
That is what one of America’s leading magazines for teen-age girls calls VD, and not without good reason. In San Francisco a high school student has a 20-percent chance of contracting VD before completing school. In the United States as a whole the gonorrhea rate for fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds is three times the national average for all ages combined. Over the past five years VD has increased over 1,000 percent among teen-agers!
And how young some of the victims are! Poland in a recent year had 64 cases of VD in children from ten to fourteen years of age. In Philadelphia in the past year there were 50 cases of VD in children under ten years of age. In Memphis, Tennessee, a five-year-old boy was treated for VD he got from intimacy with a nine-year-old girl! When questioned, the girl refused to name any of her other sex partners.
Syphilis and Gonorrhea
Syphilis is the more dangerous, whereas gonorrhea is the most prevalent venereal disease. Concerning syphilis, Boyd’s Textbook of Pathology states: “Of all diseases it is the most subtle. It is a master of disguise. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is no symptom that it cannot cause.” It even has been said that one who knows all about syphilis knows all about medicine. It is transmitted almost solely by sex relations, and mothers having it can infect their unborn offspring, though it is not hereditary.
Syphilis, which is caused by a very active and tiny corkscrew-like organism, has three stages. There is a primary stage, in which a sore or pimple develops at the place where the germ entered. Then within two or three months the more serious second stage appears. It may be marked by chills, fever, headache, white mucous patches in the mouth, and hair falling out.
For one third of the cases there is a third stage. It may appear a few months or a few years after the second stage, although at times it does not make itself manifest until ten or twenty years later. The parts most frequently harmed are the brain, the spinal cord, the eyes, the liver and the blood vessels of the heart. From 5 to 8 percent of all cases of insanity are said to be due to VD. Recently a brain specialist found 226 persons suffering from mental disorders for which no cause had been ascertained, but who had been treated for syphilis years before.
Gonorrhea is caused by a tiny organism shaped like two coffee beans. Its spread is almost wholly limited to sexual intercourse. Within three to five days it makes itself felt by a burning or stinging sensation at the time of urination, by emission of pus accompanied by redness and soreness of the male sex organ. Yet, 8 out of 10 women have no obvious symptoms.
While gonorrhea does not have the same tragic consequences that syphilis does, it can lead to sterility in both men and women and result in chronic invalidism in the latter. It can cause blindness in infants passing through an infected birth canal. Estimates say that 20 percent of all blindness is due to VD.
Obstacles to Combating VD
A great obstacle to eradicating VD, it is said, is the unwillingness of physicians in private practice to report cases, although required by law to do so. Eight cases out of nine are not reported, apparently, to shield the patients.
Apathy is also a great obstacle, both on the part of the public and on the part of the medical profession. Most persons showing up at VD clinics seem little concerned about the seriousness of VD nor do they manifest feelings of shame. Some patients come back as often as six times in one year, each time with a fresh case of VD! As one physician quipped “Bugs are not half as resistant to drugs as patients are to instruction on prevention.”
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Guard Against VD PollutionAwake!—1972 | February 8
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The fact that VD organisms are becoming more resistant to antibiotics is also a major obstacle to eradicating VD. Some strains do not respond at all to drugs; those that do respond require 70 times as many units of penicillin as in the past—5,000,000 instead of 75,000!
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Guard Against VD PollutionAwake!—1972 | February 8
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Thus one father boasted that when his two sons, fifteen and eighteen years of age, contracted VD there was no danger, for he had fully informed them about what to do in such a case! There was also the mother who told her daughter: “If you cannot bring yourself to tell me, all right. But you must be sure to get yourself treated if you ever get [VD], and try to stay away—you just must—from the crowd that gave it to you.”
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Guard Against VD PollutionAwake!—1972 | February 8
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Indulging in sex outside of marriage exacts its price, and a heavy price it is—guilty conscience, lack of self-respect, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and VD pollution. A magazine for teen-age girls asks: “How then should a girl play it safe? How can she avoid the dangers of syphilis and gonorrhea, two diseases with such potentially tragic consequences?”
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Guard Against VD PollutionAwake!—1972 | February 8
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And not to be overlooked is the fact that illicit relations often are a sinning against the next generation. Last year in the United States nearly 300 cases of congenital syphilis were reported. And are not all the miscarriages, stillbirths, blindness and sterility caused by VD pollution also sins committed against those being born?
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