LATEST figures show that ‘super-gonorrhoea’ is on the rise amid an increase in antibiotic resistance.
Cases of gonorrhoea in England rose by 22 per cent in one year, to almost 45,000 diagnoses in 2017. Public Health England consultant microbiologist Dr Helen Fifer, predictably, said that ‘the best way to protect yourself is to always use condoms with new and casual partners’.
In this age when ‘new and casual partners’ are available on the internet at the swipe of a finger, condom use is the only ‘behavioural change’ recommended as official policy.
By now it should be painfully obvious that condoms are not the solution to this problem, but part of it, acting like a car seat belt that encourages drivers to go faster without paying attention to the road – and most importantly, doesn’t always work when most needed.
But while sexual greed is treated as a matter of consumer choice, by contrast obesity is treated as a problem of greed. Over-eating results in health problems, and so does a promiscuous overindulgence in sex.
Nor is obesity only treated as an individual health problem, but as one that impacts everyone by constituting a drain on scarce health resources. It is even called an ‘epidemic’ although, unlike sexually transmitted diseases, obesity cannot be ‘caught’, even by intimate contact. Promiscuity, meanwhile, is treated as a private matter of individual choice, and no lectures on lifestyle changes are permitted, because that would be ‘judgemental’. It is even treated in sex education ‘lessons’ as normal and inevitable.
Yet like obesity, it can be a life or death issue. In fact if promiscuity continues unchecked, and antibiotics become useless, sexually transmitted diseases will once again become deadly.
Only then, perhaps, will public health advice on this issue mirror that regarding obesity, and recommend individual restraint and responsibility as the solution – simply avoid over-indulgence!
