A Little Extrapolation Goes A Long Way

So I'm reading headlines and I see this:

Sex Infections Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls

I saw it often enough to actually take a few minutes and read it. After all, that's a HUGE number of teenage girls. And every news source is carrying the story.  Funny how sex sells...but I digress.

From the cursory perusing of the article I see this:

The centers conducts the annual study, which asks a representative sample of the household population a wide range of health questions. The analysis was based on information collected in the 2003-4 survey.

Extrapolating from the findings, Dr. Forhan said 3.2 million teenage women were infected with at least one of the four diseases.

The 838 participants in the study were chosen at random with standard statistical techniques. Of the women asked, 96 percent agreed to submit vaginal swabs for testing.

So, we have no idea where this "random" sample occurred. Or any other data about these girls who were tested. Privacy must be protected you know and really we're supposed to trust the data.   Funny how that works - makes all those pesky questions go away.  After all one can't be too intrusive about the sex lives of teens can one?

Yet from these 838 participants we are going to extrapolate this to 1/4 of ALL teen girls having some sort of sexually transmitted disease.  And this was back in 2003-2004... over 4 years ago!

Oooookay.

Of course we know what this means.

The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said the new findings “emphasize the need for real comprehensive sex education.”

“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price."

Funny - I hadn't noticed that "abstinence" was the current policy.  Isn't it amazing how it's suddenly pulled out of a hat and presented as the culprit in spreading disease among teen girls.  Last I checked there are sex education classes in high school.  Some of them graphic enough to cause parents and children to protest.  Looks like they aren't doing too much good now are they?

But all you really have to do is follow the money.  What else is new.

The "need for comprehensive sex education" really means - SEND US MONEY! Do it now!  Before your teenage girl... what?  According to the "study" it's already too late to stop them... oh sorry, got off track.  SEND MONEY!  Yeah, that's it.  More money will stop all these problems.  Lots and lots more money...

Sure thing. 

Posted by: Teresa in Medical at 12:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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