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