Did penicillin, rather than the pill, usher in the sexual revolution?
Penicillin can wipe out syphilis with just one shot. As the antibiotic came into wide use in the 1950s, the number of syphilis cases and syphilis deaths plummeted. And that’s when teen pregnancies and illegitimate births began to rise — long before the invention of the birth control pill.
That’s the provocative thesis of Andrew Francis, an economist at Emory University in Atlanta who studies HIV/AIDS and the cost of disease. He knew that the rate of new HIV infections spiked after antiretroviral treatments used widely after 2000 made the disease less of a death sentence.
Francis was browsing through historical trends in gonorrhea rates one day, when he saw that the rate of this non-deadly STD really started cranking up in the early 1950s. “Really?” Francis said to himself. “What was going on in the 1950s?”
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Geez, I figured this out back in college. Will anyone call me provocative?
John the Libertarian on January 30, 2013 at 10:45 PM
I know HIV/AIDS pretty much put the kibosh on the “sexual revolution” in the early 1980′s. If you went out on a cold, still night and listened very carefully you could hear the soft “tap, tap, tap” of ladies thighs slamming shut all across the land. For a young single engineer that traveled a lot during that period and had a pretty decent income, it was a tragedy.
crosspatch on January 30, 2013 at 10:45 PM
Depends on how you’re dressed.
malclave on January 30, 2013 at 10:56 PM
Maybe, but I don’t think so. Penicillin had many other uses than bailing out people from their sluttiness. The pill was specifically for preventing pregnancy and other uses were mostly happy side-effects.
And I agree with crosspatch. One old book written in the 80′s said “thank God we are leaving the modern Dark Ages”…because by the 80′s the grim consequences of using illicit drugs and illicit sex for recreation were undeniably chronicled to medical science. Just a few decades prior there wasn’t much to appeal to besides common sense and Judeo-Christian morals…both of which the hippie movement had thrown overboard anyway!
MelonCollie on January 30, 2013 at 10:56 PM
well played….very well played..
ted c on January 30, 2013 at 11:08 PM
From the last gasps of it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlM5OT8l07U
“Nothing a shot can’t cure”
Once AIDS came about things became more dangerous. Of course, they predicted a heterosexual epidemic of AIDS… That has never happened. AIDS is STILL primarily a homosexual male disease. Go figure.
wildcat72 on January 30, 2013 at 11:28 PM
That was true in the 50′s but with drug resistant strains of most STD’s I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
chemman on January 30, 2013 at 11:33 PM
This would old true if most Americans were afraid of STDs previous to Penicillin. But, my guess is STD education wasn’t that great and nothing ever stopped people from having multiple partners then or now. But, it is an interesting point that should be studied.
Warner Todd Huston on January 30, 2013 at 11:45 PM
And you wingnuts thought your tax dollars could be better spent than subsidizing NPR.
Ted Torgerson on January 30, 2013 at 11:56 PM
I thought it was fluoridation.
Right, Mandrake?
Del Dolemonte on January 31, 2013 at 12:09 AM
Cervical cancer is spread by sex too.
I’m against cancer.
juliesa on January 31, 2013 at 1:13 AM
Well, just to be accurate, cervical cancer is not spread by sex. Some strains of HPV (of which there are dozens) are spread by sex that can cause cancer (not only of the cervix but are also the leading cause of throat cancer in men). It can also be spread by kissing. There is a shot now that provides immunity against those strains or you can get “cross immunity” from a different strain of HPV that causes no symptoms. The shots are pretty useless in adults who have been sexually active, though, because they already likely have some strain of HPV.
Most strains of HPV cause no symptoms at all. They just exist benignly in the human body without doing anything at all. There is no test for many strains females. There are VERY few tests for ANY strain for males. A male can not be tested for the strain that causes cervical cancer, for example. HPV of one sort or another is pretty much ubiquitous among adult humans. Some strains can give cross immunity. For example, the strain that causes genital warts gives immunity to the strain that causes cancer. There is no test for a male for either of those strains.
HPV is something that has been living with the human population for a very long time. If you have ever had a wart anywhere on your body, then you have HPV. The new vaccinations may wipe that out for the coming generations as it will wipe out both the strains that cause cancer and the ones that cause genital warts. (please do not confuse HPV with HSV).
crosspatch on January 31, 2013 at 1:41 AM
.
No there was lots of info about Venereal Diseases (what STDs were called before it was all PCed up), and I even saw an old movie clip from WWII where they were mass treating women who had VD to prevent them from infecting potential soldiers.
LincolntheHun on January 31, 2013 at 6:54 AM
@ wildcat, just to set the record straight: in the US and developed countries, it is a disease it majority high risk for people who are gay or have homosexual sex. But 61% of cases are MSM, the other 39% are heterosexual. Worldwide, the contraction rate is mainly heterosexual. FYI
nyclakerfan on January 31, 2013 at 8:59 AM