Sexually Transmitted Disease

[BluesMan]

Playboy - November 1965
The two major concerns in the US are STD's and the Deficit.

The more they change the more we do the same old stuff.
Wasn’t this the definition of insanity? We must have an insane culture.

[InfiniteNow]

HB,

If you really want your idea to have an impact, you'd need to stop production of cholesterol meds, heart meds, insulin, and all manner of other things. The percentage of the population with STDs is pretty low, so stopping those meds alone will be a single drop in a large ocean. CraigD appropriately mentioned some reasons why it would never happen, and there are others too.

I for one know that I'd be willing to kill to save my life and the life of those I love. I've got a sick kid, and you're in my way? You're going to lose, I guarentee it.

[Edella]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

I've got a sick kid, and you're in my way? You're going to lose, I guarentee it.

If being a martial arts instructor(Kung Fu I believe?)isn't enough to keep to one from screwing with InfiniteNow,this statement should do it.
It seems your idea has been thoroughly panned HydrogenBond.

[HydrogenBond]

I proposed the withholding of STD medicines idea to help set up an interesting train of thought. Picture, if culture decided to withhold STD treatments, hypothetically. What would occur is an experiment of selective advantage a la evolutionary theory. Rather than a meteor, global warming, etc., a range of STD bio-hazards would pertubate the environment. We are not creating anything artificial, this would be a natural disaster. Those with selective advantages would survive and those without any selective advantages would go the way of the dinosaur.

Selective advantage could occur passively, via some humans developing an immune and/or genetic resistant to the STD's. It could also occur actively, with advances in human sexual behavior, which would allow one to survive under the conditions of the bio-hazard. Those unable to adapt either way, would be at a selective disadvantage. Luckily, science does not push evolutionary theory under such conditions, but will think ethically, so the selectively disadvantaged are able to survive.

Under the conditions of this hypothetical evolutionary experiment, what is considered immoral sexual behavior will be the hardest hit by the plague. Science does not seem to understand what would be selective disadvantage, under natural conditions, is being artifically propped up, to create the illusion of relative behavior. Relative behavior needs the artifical conditions provided by culture and supported by science for the illusion to work. Science is helping to create a self forfilling illusion.

[InfiniteNow]

Interesting thought experiment indeed. In fact, I was with you until you said this:

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

what is considered immoral sexual behavior will be the hardest hit by the plague.

Please define "immoral sexual behavior" in a non-relative way for me.


Cheers.

[Edella]

Nevermind,InfiniteNow beat me to it....

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I proposed the withholding of STD medicines idea to help set up an interesting train of thought.

I knew you weren’t a monster, HBond! A Molecular Biology heretic, yes, but not a monster

Those with selective advantages would survive and those without any selective advantages would go the way of the dinosaur.

Selective advantage could occur passively, via some humans developing an immune and/or genetic resistant to the STD's. It could also occur actively, with advances in human sexual behavior, which would allow one to survive under the conditions of the bio-hazard….

What you say is practically a law of biological and social Darwinism, and, ICMO, true. However, your list is, it think, unrealistically short.

Consider, in the field of Mathematics over the last century, the number of consequential mathematicians who were, by most peoples’ definition, sexual or moral deviants. Turing was homosexual, as was Hardy (though Hard was described by some as “non-practicing”). If some essayists are to be believed, for at least the first half of the 20th century, most of the Math department of Cambridge were gay. Erdős may have been – he was unabashedly uninterested in women and children. Gödel, though heterosexual, was promiscuous – what we might now call “a freaky love machine”. Russell, though perhaps less freaky, was by most accounts, including his own writing, “sexually immoral” by the standards of his day, or ours. A careful examination of the biographies of mathematicians, or formal-thinking people in general, will reveal an incidence of “perversion” or “deviance” much greater than the population as a whole, despite the efforts of the subjects and biographers at secrecy toward such details.

Now, consider how societies threatened by identifiable populations perceived as disease carriers have been known to react.

A reasonable, though very speculative, argument can be made that a society that “thins its herd” of “undesirables”, may also be “skimming the cream” of individuals who drive its scientific and technological progress.

Over the long term – just what “the long term is” for any time in history can vary from a few decades to a few centuries, is difficult to determine, but appears at present to be trending shorter – “thinned herd” societies may find themselves at a technological disadvantage to “fatter herd” societies.

History can draw some fairly simple conclusion about the relative success of more and less technologically advanced societies sharing the same geography – “the same geography”, at present, being effectively “the same planet”.

So, on the question of

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

… what the final group of survivers would comprise?

I suspect it would not be one without a small but influential number of “deviants”, many of them of the “immoral sexual” variety, nor one with a less tolerance of such deviance than present day society.

Although an interesting line of intellectual speculation, I believe this subject is actually a significant shaper of our present day history, which is marked by conflict between more technologically advanced “open” (in their own words) or “decadent” (in others’) societies, and less technologically advanced, more “moral” (in their own words) or “repressive” (in others’) ones. However this real life experiment turns out, I hope the process is gentle, but fear that it will not be.

[HappytheStripper]

Sexually transmitted diseases .. are a sign of over-population .. lack of self respect and total dis-regard for anothers well being .. as well as total dis-regard for the self ..

In order to gain a better prespective on STD's .. break it down .. sexually .. transmittion .. and dis-ease .. and understand each word .. then go back through the history of man .. and you will begin to see how STD's evolved in accordance with mans stupidity .. use aids as an example ..

Ashley

[Mercedes Benzene]

Another factor affecting STD trends is education. Obviously, the less educated you are about the topic, the higher the number of instances of STDs in a given population. In most developed nations, the dangers of STDs are common knowledge. If you take some 3rd-world African countries however, there are much higher instances because it isn't a very well known problem.

[Edella]

Originally Posted by HappytheStripper

Sexually transmitted diseases .. are a sign of over-population .. lack of self respect and total dis-regard for anothers well being .. as well as total dis-regard for the self ..Ashley

Interesting.Could you expand on that a bit? I'm not sure I fully understand.