Medicine
VD —the irresponsible propagandists
John Linklater
Daily newspapers do not often advise readers to risk catching venereal disease by indulging in promiscuity. But this is precisely what the Guardian appears to have cloue in an insidious article (`Clap trap,' January 27) which nreaches the inevitability of venereal disease in a permissive society and stresses the trivial, curable nature of such disease while urging its acceptability. The author argues that if syphillis and gonorrhoea are the price of sexual happiness, then they are a price worth paying. The argument is irresponsible and the article is indeed a trap.
This plea for the social acceptabiiity of venereal disease is no isolated event, however, and has been made by a number of other persons already in the public eye. Last year Miss Germaine Greer argued the case fervently, likewise adding her view that the 'inevitable increase in the incidence of abortions and venereal disease was a relatively low price to pay for "less stress and hence less neurosis." She said that she wished that she herself had contracted venereal disease. I find it difficult to restrain myself from taking issue as to what constitutes stress, and as to the aetiology of neurosis, but equally difficult not to hope with Miss Greer that she will have the good luck one day to have her wish fulfilled.
Magazines on sale to teenage girls also seem to be indoctrinating their readers to accept venereal diseases, stating laconically, for example, that if the girls put their "more liberated attitudes into practice" they will "unfortunately" become infected with venereal disease from time to time. It is almost as if they were discussing an unpleasant touch of tonsillitis.
Those who lead the permissive trend are guilty of gross deception if they hand out contraceptives and advice without also teaching the true nature of the venereal risks. Many youngsters do not realise that the infecting organism of syphilis may work its way unseen from a hidden site of infection, to disperse into, and destroy, any organ, including brain, bones, kidneys or liver by forming rubbery masses of dead tissue. The disease at this stage has long, deceptive periods of latency when the patient appears to be perfectly well, but the damage it causes is nonetheless irreparable. The ter minal stage, in which syphilis destroys the brain, leading to in sanity, paralysis and bouts of agonising pain, still occurs in this country today.
Gonorrhoea is much more widespread than syphilis and less potentially dangerous, but far less likely to be noticed if the site of infection is within the vagina or the rectum. Undetected gonorrhoea later causes abcesses around the vagina and infections of the fallopian tubes leading to incurable sterility, or to blindness in newborn babies. Gonorrhoea also often leads to a troublesome, intractable arthritis in later life, notwithstanding that the original infection may have been cured.
Both of the principal venereal diseases may now be cured by appropriate antibiotics, providing that an early diagnosis can be made. The problem, therefore, usually arises only because the patient does not realise that infection has taken place, or because of an inadequate or timid personality. or low intelligence. The incidence of gonorrhoea and of the lesser, sexually transmitted diseases is nevertheless rising. Gonorrhoea is about as frequent as measles.
The most disturbing aspect of the picture is that the Government does not appear to be attempting to halt the sex explosion. Sex is nowadays big business, and the Government is no longer restraining it. Sex shops abound. Pornography may be purchased without restriction. There are frank sex shows in many theatres and the act of coitus is shown on cinema screens, and beamed direct into each home by television. Young adolescents today are therefore inundated with sex ad vertising and discussion. Official approval of this state of affairs may be logically deduced from absence of government control and from government expenditure on sex education and free contraceptives.
It is ironical that the taxpayer is forced to pay for much of the corrupting influence to which his sons and daughters are exposed as well as paying for the venereal disease and abortion services that they subsequently require. There has probably never before been a welfare state in which extramarital sex has been thus publicly subsidised from beginning to end.
The probation officer who suggested a few days ago that the services of prostitutes should be prescribable under the NHS may have amazed and shocked the Crown Court at Sheffield but, if we pause to consider the sick state of society today, we may conclude that she was probably only a few years ahead of fashion: she merely jumped the next gun.
Previous page
