Does it seem ironic that ARG stands for Antibiotic Resistant Gonorrhea?  Maybe a little?

In an era of movies like ‘Friends with Benefits,’ in a time when entertainers like Russell Brand and David Duchovny are treated for sexual addiction, in a time when we simply shrug off the words ‘promiscuous’ or ‘fornication; as antiquated bits of fundamentalism, we have yet another reason to pause and think.

Gonorrhea that resists current antibiotic therapy.

https://www.cdc.gov/std/gonorrhea/arg/default.htm

It isn’t just burning, unfortunately.  It’s also infertility and in some cases infections of the blood-stream, heart valves or brain that can result from untreated (or now, untreatable) gonorrhea.

But we’ll probably ignore this too.  Moderns are simply too cool, too comfortable with sexual adventure and misadventure to put the pieces together.  When discussing HPV with a friend once, I mentioned one of the side-effects.  ‘Well, yeah, but it’s just cervical cancer,’ she opined.

It’s just cancer.  It’s just infertility.  It’s just pain.  It’s just lesions and scars and self-loathing.  It’s just sex.  In the case of Hepatitis, or HIV, it’s just death.

As if I said, as a physician, ‘sure it’s a drunk driving incident, but it’s just paralysis, it’s just amputation, it’s just months in the ICU!’

When will we learn that sexual behavior has consequences?  And stop simply saying, ‘sure, but with condoms…’

Condoms aside, we still have…ARG!

And that should tell us something.

Edwin

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