Ignorance Can Kill Your Teenager : Youngsters aren’t being prepared to meet the AIDS epidemic
In the summer of 1995, a medical expert made a chilling prediction about AIDS and the virus that causes it. Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, director for AIDS research at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center and a consultant to the American Foundation for AIDS Research, foresaw a “third wave” of HIV infection spread by teenagers unaware of their infection to other teenagers ignorant of how to protect themselves.
The third wave may have begun. According to a recent White House study on “Youth and HIV/AIDS,” 40,000 to 80,000 Americans become infected with HIV each year. The study says that one-fourth of all new infections involve people under the age of 20. And the worst of it is that Americans are not preparing their youngsters to meet the threat.
According to a study by the National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health, the parents of adolescents today are as squeamish as their predecessors about discussing sexuality with their children. The study found that parents are often sending three messages: just say “no,” just say “not now,” and don’t ask, don’t tell.
A recent national poll of 2,000 mothers and daughters found 71% of the mothers believed that their daughters were virgins. But 63% of the daughters in that poll claimed that they were sexually active. Roughly 75% of high school students have engaged in sex by the time they complete the 12th grade, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, many parents complain that sex education classes are not sufficiently focused on morality. Nationally, there have been many attempts (largely unsuccessful) at reducing sex education classes to the “abstinence-only” message.
Stressing abstinence is vital, a point made repeatedly in the White House study, which was released by Patricia Fleming, director of the President’s Office of National AIDS Policy. But making it the only message is not just closing the barn door after the horse has fled. It’s closing the door after the horse has returned with foal.
Information, from every credible source, is the only thing that will slow this burgeoning epidemic among teenagers. As the White House report suggests, the message must start with knowledgeable parents and include community leaders, policymakers, schools and other young people.
Start with the statistics on the high rate of HIV infection among teenagers. Move on to the fact that the latest generation of AIDS-fighting drugs (protease inhibitors) are 100 times more effective than their predecessors and still cannot completely stop the virus. There is no vaccine. There is no cure.
Go further to the fact that those new drugs are prohibitively expensive, enough for President Clinton to rightly request an increase in the government’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program to give more people access to them.
And something else might shake that sense of adolescent invincibility: just about everything we know about prolonging life and fighting back against the disease is known about infants and adults, not adolescents.
“We clearly do not know enough about adolescents .J.J. about how HIV affects them physiologically or behaviorally, and about the progress of HIV disease in young people,” the White House report said. “Adolescents appear only peripherally on the radar screens of most AIDS researchers.” In harsher words, the report says that too little is known about how effectively adolescents resist the disease, or about how quickly they will die.
It’s another argument to bring to the table when trying to teach adolescents about this deadly infectious disease in their midst.
