Class review

I learned a lot this term, a lot more than I thought I would. I was really surprised because I thought this class was only going to be about STDs and AIDS but it really was a public health class and the effect of STDs and AIDS on society and how the public handles governmental health plans. I really liked that aspect of we learned because I have been hearing so much about the specific illnesses and nothing about how to deal with all of that on a cultural and global level. The most usual thing was splitting up the lectures so that we would have a dry lecture day then a video or guest speaker day; it really made the class more enjoyable. During the lecture I really did not like the incomplete slides on the web. There were many days that I forgot to print of the slides so I was overwhelmed with all the information that I had to write down that I just stopped trying and just listened. If you don’t have those slides printed out ahead of time there is no way that you will be able to have all the information later. Next time I would change the lectures so that a lot of the technical stuff is on the slides and the other information like what you add that is not on the slides the information we need to write down because it was so hard to keep up with the lecture if you did not have those slides. I think that this is a very important topic and should be taught at a university level. This is about our health and as we go on and have sexual encounters it is important to stay healthy. The public health section especially should be taught at a university level because in the late teens and early 20’s most people begin to look to their future and the impact issues have on the future for not just them but the communities around them so this information would be lost to students in high school, they would just dismiss the importance of the subject.

Life of Bob

I learned that in most cases it is very hard to contact your past sexual partners because in most cases the time from infection to diagnosis is over several years so many people loose contact information. I think that his experience is very similar to many individuals in those societies where sexual contact must be mutual and societies where the individuals are promiscuous. In patriarchal societies the women do not really have a choice if they have sex so many women never get tested because they already assume they have it or are too afraid of the results. In rural areas heterosexual sexual activity is the main route of exposure. This is due to the fact that condom use is not practiced regularly. Also most people in rural areas tend to be very religious so instead of the usual intercourse many younger people participate in anal intercourse and over forms of sexual contact where pregnancy is not going to be an outcome so forms of protection are seen as not needed. I think that here are two major obstacles to treat rural areas; the first being education. Typically the people in rural areas are not as well educated and it takes some time for new information to reach them. Also it has to do with logistics; right now most of the programs are looking at how to benefit the most people so they tend to focus on dense populations because that is where the information will be accessible to more people.

HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a virus that infiltrates white blood cells and replicates until the cell is torn apart, and then the virus continues to attack other white blood cells. HIV really just means that you have the virus but it is under control, if too many white blood cells are destroyed then HIV becomes AIDS. Further more people who have AIDS do not die from AIDS, they die from the infections that the person is more susceptible to because of their degraded immune system. I also know that AIDS is a global epidemic which is mostly located in poor rural areas such as India and Southern Africa. A lot of the information I have gotten about HIV/AIDS have really been in passing from various health classes that I really did not pay attention in. HIV and other STIs where not really covered in my sex ed classes, just how to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections/diseases. I’m hoping to learn about the major causes of wide spread HIV infection. I think that this class has alluded to the most prominent areas but I would like to know the actual cause of the wide spread infection and not just speculation. The most surprising thing to me is all the misinformation out there when regarding safe sex and condom use. There are interviews with people who say that they don’t use condoms because they don’t work, just a huge amount of misinformation.

Prostitution in Thailand

Thailand outlawed prostitution in 1960 but it still happens today. The Taiwanese government still holds prostitution to be illegal but regulates brothels. They have even implemented a 100% condom use initiative that keeps tabs on all the brothels making sure that every sexual encounter that could use a condom is done so with a condom. This is very contradicting in some ways because the Taiwanese government condemned brothels in the 60’s but is involved in them. However I am sure that the reason why the government has adopted this policy was to decrease the risk of transmission of HIV and other STI’s. This is a pretty big step in government public health because I think the Taiwanese government is the only government in the world that actually regulates safe sex in an environment such as that. This also brings up a big global health perspective because living in the US we are educated a lot on the risks of STIs but in other countries they do not see the risk of infection to be a significant one or the Taiwanese would not have to worry about implementing the 100% condom use policy. Even with that being said I still think that the state of Nevada should adopt the Taiwanese policy in order to promote safer sex.

Condom Commercial

The video I choose is actually a condom commercial but I think it is a really good one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLdFreZRw0s . It does give a lot of good information, first off the guy didn’t want to use a condom and so the young lady stopped because she did want him to us a condom; which conveys a really good message that there should be a mutual consent between the people before anything serious actually happens. In the commercial the girl is being very honest which is good because the best thing a person can be especially in those situations is to be completely honest. The last thing I really like about this commercial is that it brings up the very true point that it’s only a condom. Just because the guy wears a condom doesn’t mean it won’t feel good, there are entire companies out there that make money trying to make sex more enjoyable. There really isn’t any misinformation or scare tactics in this commercial which makes it that much more affective because a lot of people really do not respond well to scare tactics. I think that this add is targeted to the college age people as well as the recently graduated demographic.
I think that advertising in general will have a great impact on STD/STI’s prevention as well as help stop unexpected pregnancy because it does two things. First it puts information out there, even if it is just one fact, the more information the better prepared people will be when it comes to making a decision. Second by bringing it up so much and being remind of the issues it forces people to think about STD/STI’s and encourages the public to go find more information of the subject.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study apology

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a study started around the 1930’s. At first the program wasn’t a study it was a plan set in place to treat syphilis, but first they had to determine who had the disease so massive testing was initiated. Then the Great Depression hit and there was no money for the actual treatment phase. The leaders in the study at this point decided not to tell the individuals who were infected that they did not have the money to treat them, instead they lied and gave them placebos and studied the progress of the disease for 40 years. In the apology that former President Bill Clinton gave apologized or the unethical treatment and misinformation giving to the men involved in the Tuskegee Study. He also emphasized four points that would insure that something like the Tuskegee Study would not happen again and prevent any other type of unethical treatment of patients happened again.
My initial reaction to the apology was that it was a pretty standard national apology but I after I read on and began to think more deeply about what happened I kept thinking that whatever he said was not going to make up for what happened. How can anyone apologize for the things that happened during the Tuskegee Study? It was also a big step for the nation because when it comes to the United States as a whole we are not known for admitting we were wrong. So for the president to personally and publicly apologize was a big step for the nation. I was not expecting him to announce those goals. Some most of them I was pretty standard stuff but the one about starting a graduate program in ethics was kind of weird because I assumed that there were already such programs out there already, but I guess not because this was really the first time when a huge unethical problem pertaining to medicine had happened in the United Stated. I just would have thought that after the Nazi trials that an ethics graduate program would have been created.

http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/clintonp.htm

MDR TB

MDR TB(multidrug-resistant tuberculosis) is a from of tuberculosis that is resistant to at least two of the best TB drugs. MDR T is considered man made due to mismanged drug treatment. DOT(directly observed treatment) is now used to comat the mismanagement of TB treatment y directly observing the patients taking there drugs. The CDC discoved that the refugees from Thailand had MDR TB and when the CDC investagated the cause and discoved that the refugees where living in conditions that cause the families to become suseptable to TB. The CDC also discovered that most of the MDR TB was of the same strain which ment that there was an oubreak in that particular town.

We should be very concered by MDR TB because it is the result of either not taking the full course of treatment or taking the wrong treatment. MDR TB is more complex to treat and the mortality rate of the disease is higher. The drugs for MDR TB are more expensive and more toxic than those drugs that treat regulare tuberculosis. A lot of people do not really see TB as a disease that they have to worry about because we have the cure but in reality the incident with the refugees from Thailand pointed out it really does not take a lot for one person to infect the people around them. MDR TB is also very dangerous because a person with regualre TB can get MDR TB by not follow the regimented drug treatment and the mortaliy rate and rise drastically.

The emergance of MDR TB has really changed the treatment of other diseases because it shows that even when the right treatment is perscribed it does not necessarily mean that the patient is going to follow the drug regiment which could result in fatel consiquences. One of the causes of MDR TB also shows a huge problem with the patients of other diseases. When a patient thinks they are getting better they stop taking the drugs even when the infection has not been completely removed which leave them wide open for a relaspe; and in most cases relaspes are more aggressive than the origonal diseases themselves.

http://www2a.cdc.gov/podcasts/player.asp?f=10188