Chicago Tribune - December 5, 2005
Dawn Turner Trice, dtrice@tribune.com

More importantly, many are lacking the skills necessary to protect themselves.

On Friday, a day after World AIDS Day, a group of high school students from the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health held a rally outside the Chicago Public Schools headquarters demanding that school officials commit to making sex education mandatory and more comprehensive.

Right now, city schools are mandated by the state only to teach HIV/AIDS education. But as young people are realizing--and for some it's a devastating lesson--other sexually transmitted diseases can ravage the body if not treated. They can disfigure the genitals as well as cause infertility and a host of other health problems.

The Illinois Department of Public Health says that across the state reported cases of the STD chlamydia in 15- to 19-year-olds rose 59 percent between 1994 and 2004. Chlamydia, which often causes no visible symptoms, can be a brutal disease if left untreated.

For 20- to 24-year-olds, chlamydia cases soared 142 percent during that same period. (One reason for the big jump is that more people have been tested in recent years using more advanced screening techniques.)

Still, communities are feeling the upsurge and fighting back. In response to the increasing number of STD cases in the South Shore neighborhood, Jackson Park Hospital, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department, opened an STD clinic in September.

Alicia Bunton, the hospital's HIV/STD program director, told me that the clinic's very first patient was a 15-year-old girl with trichomoniasis. The clinic's second patient was a 13-year-old boy with gonorrhea.

Patients are diagnosed and treated on the spot. They're counseled on safer sex practices, including ways to encourage partners to come in for testing, and to use latex condoms--the best method to protect against STDs. They're also told that it's impossible to tell if a person has an STD just by looking at him or her.

"Parents and other adults are still squeamish about talking to their teenagers about sex," Bunton said.

Squeamish at a time when sexually explicit images abound. The message: Sex is glamorous and, as long as you protect against getting pregnant, you can have fun without any repercussions. The reality: Sex still can kill and maim.

Using a slideshow, clinic staffers show patients color glossies of body parts mangled by untreated STDs. The images are extremely disturbing and should be required viewing for any high school student who thinks he or she is utterly indestructible.

In September, the CDC released a survey that found 66 percent of males ages 15 to 19 reported using a condom during their latest sexual encounter. Only 44 percent of females in that age group reported doing the same.

Among 15- to 19-year-olds, 55 percent of males and 54 percent of females said they had engaged in oral sex.

"A lot of people still don't consider oral sex [to be] sex," Bunton said. "They consider it safe sex. But we see them coming into the clinic with STDs manifesting in" various parts of their bodies.

Jobi Petersen, executive director of the non-profit that held Friday's rally, said the group wants sex ed to be more standardized in the city's public schools.

"Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are prevalent because they get federal funding," she said. "But they're frequently incomplete, misleading and haven't been proven to be effective."

Personally, I believe the longer a young person waits, the better. And, sex ed should be taught in the home. But the reality is that a lot of young people aren't waiting. And sex remains a taboo topic in too many homes.

These days a lot of young people are getting their cues about sex from the media and the streets.

There should be no question whether sex education should be a mandatory part of the high school curriculum. Increasingly the question should be this: How early should it start?

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