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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The tough question

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Every day parents make tough decisions regarding their children. Should being told by their teen’s doctor adolescents are now required to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) be one of them?

A regional health department director in Connecticut is calling for the mandatory testing of teenagers from 8th grade through 12th grade. Soon, 15-year-old kids in England could be required to take HIV tests by their general practitioners.

Health experts’ goal is to normalize STD testing, encourage youths to start taking safety precautions and reduce transmission rates.

A health risk behavior study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that more than 45 percent of girls and 46 percent of boys had sexual intercourse and even higher percentages of teens did not use a condom.

Although the numbers show that teens are engaging in sexual activity, many in Indiana disagree with mandatory STD testing and believe it is not the answer.

“If we made this mandatory, I think there’s a lot of ethical issues involved. You’re forcing a medical procedure on a kid and ethically we don’t do that in medicine – we seek the consent of an individual before we do it,” said Marcia Shew, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at IU School of Medicine. “Furthermore, not every high school kid is sexually active so how do you go about figuring out who is and who isn’t?”

In addition to the moral and legal ramifications, Dr. Janet N. Arno, associate professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine and medical director of the Bell Flower Clinic said that these kinds of measures would not only be too expensive to implement, but “would not be effective over the long term.”

If mandatory measures were to take place, Arno asks where would this testing take place, who will receive the results and if infected, how will patients receive treatment and what types of consequences will occur for those who refuse the mandatory STD testing?

Shew understands the need for lowering STD rates, but maintains that kids aren’t even having an abundance of sex despite perceptions that they are. In fact, those rates are steady and have been slightly decreasing over the last few years.

“The truth is that adults have far more sex than adolescents. A higher proportion of those kids who have had sex, have only had it once or twice,” said Shew. “If you want to talk about rates, 19 through 24-year-olds have higher STD rates.”

The most common STDs teens face is gonorrhea, Chlamydia, trichomoniasis and human papillomavirus (HPV).

Shew went on to say that forceful methods would only deter sexually active youths from being tested. The alternative – providing avenues for teens to seek confidential testing and public funding for such services. She’s also an advocate of more sex-ed classes in schools.

Offering a comfortable atmosphere and transparency about sex and STD testing would also aid in teens becoming more responsible in knowing their sexual health status.

Most importantly, Shew says that teens need a comprehensive approach to sexual education. Advances in technology make STDs appear to be manageable, however teens need messages that help them truly understand the risks of sex.

“Disease control has to be every person’s priority if it is going to be effective,” Arno said. “That means if teens are going to receive mandatory testing what about other high risk groups…men who have sex with men, arrestees, commercial sex workers etcetera.”

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