Sexual Deviance: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

In the first couple decades of the Sexual Revolution, Americans began to engage in unprecedented levels of licentious behavior. It wasn’t that promiscuity was new–it wasn’t–but rather the scale. The 1960s ushered in the era of “free love”, and the Baby Boomers would carry this into the 1970s.

The Pill made contraception relatively easy; if that failed, abortion was legal. And, in terms of diseases, other than herpes–which was mostly a nuisance–almost everything else was otherwise curable with antibiotics.

But in the 1980s, an epidemic began to surface. Many in the gay community began to suffer an illness that featured a breakdown of the immune system. They would suffer from diseases and cancers that became opportunistic as their bodies could no longer fight them. This disease would become known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the causitive virus–Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)–being transmissible via sexual contact and other body fluid contact.

Gays, prostitutes, intravenous drug users, even those who received blood transfusions and organ transplants–before the blood supply was locked down with adequate testing–were at high risk. Tennis player Arthur Ashe contracted it from a blood transfusion during surgery. Many hemophiliacs contracted AIDS from blood transfusions.

While AIDS did not derail the Sexual Revolution, it slowed the growth of it. Promiscuity rates, at least among heterosexuals, would drop. Even homosexuals–the most promiscuous demographic group on the planet–began to ratchet back the extent of their promiscuity. Many gay bathouses would shut down altogether.

AIDS was a particularly scary disease: until the late 1990s, a diagnosis of HIV-Positive was, for all intents and purposes, a death sentence. If you contracted full-blown AIDS, the only question was when, not if, you would succumb.

Then, in the late 1990s, researchers would break major ground, developing new, complex, and expensive classes of drugs–protease inhibitors–that greatly extended the lifespans of those with HIV, rendering the disease a mostly manageable condition like diabetes.

People still die from AIDS, but not at the same rate as the 1980s.

These newer drugs have spawned the moral hazard: gays, who had become cautious in their practices since the outbreak of HIV, began to engage in riskier behavior.

A friend of mine once remarked that, given the medical advancements–for everything from Hepatitis B (vaccine), Cervical Cancer (vaccine), and HIV/AIDS (protease inhibitors)–the sexual revolution might just kick back into high gear.

Meanwhile, a sexually-transmitted disease–once considered very curable with antibiotics–began to show significant resistance to antibiotics.

For most of the last 50 years, gonnorhea, like syphillis, was considered a low-grade nuisance: modern antibiotics kept them mostly in check.

That, however, is changing, and fast. And while the origin of this new strain of gonnorhea has its roots in the homosexual community, make no mistake: promiscuous heterosexuals will be at severe risk of contracting it, and–if the trend continues–with no effective cure on the horizon.

 

Health Insurance Getting Dropped: a Real-Life, Small Business Example

KM–a friend of mine and Cubbie’s–is a physician in Central Kentucky.

Here is her response to my recent post:

Here is an example for you…

I am a small business owner (8 employees plus myself) who has provided group health insurance since opening my business. Six of those employees were covered by health insurance and my group plan, this past year, cost 70k yearly (it went up about 30% per year). This is a huge expense for a small business. I received a notice that our plan did not meet compliance with Obamacare’s new regulations. Therefore, I dropped our health insurance and, instead, opted to give a stipend for employee directed coverage. While the stipend will still cover their expenses, most of them are discouraged by the huge hassle. I am a bit relieved, however, to be stepping OUT of the insurance business.
As any reader can attest here: KM is being quite generous with her workers.

News Flash: Cheating Can Be Bad For Your Heart

I found this article interesting.

Doctors have long known that men live longer if they consistently have sex into old age, but knocking boots only provides a health boost if it occurs with the same partner in a familiar place. Sex into old age only helps if you’re doing it with your spouse. Sudden coital death occurs most frequently when a man engages in coitus with a woman who is not his long-term partner.

Priceless.

Good Work, Denninger

His latest post–about medical costs and the inability of government to spend at the current levels of growth on a sustained basis–is spot-on. Aside from the pure government spending side of this, there are other monster issues that need to be addressed, particularly (a) the government-medical-financial complex and (b) the impact of price controls in other countries (i.e. England, Canada) on our prices.

Still, the last time I saw a Denninger video clip, I swore he had to have lost some serious weight. At the end of his latest post is a before/after picture which confirmed what I thought. Very impressive.

His fitness advice is very sound. While some people are otherwise only marginally able to control their weight, most Americans don’t have that problem: it’s purely a matter of lifestyle and reasonable fitness is attainable.

Getting a good handle on food intake–especially portion control and calorie quality while ensuring that enough protein is consumed–is important. There is plenty of room for variety in this: from Atkins on one hand to pure vegan on the other. Get with your doc first, and find out which diets are more optimal for your condition. (From some studies I’ve seen, Type 2 diabetes sufferers may benefit from Atkins whereas heart patients with major blockage might benefit from the vegetarian path recommended by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. But I am neither a doc nor a nutritionist, so what I am saying here is not to be taken as Gospel advice.)

As for activity, unless you are severely handicapped or otherwise have a major medical condition that precludes you, you can exercise. As Denninger points out, there are lots of options out there, even for a variety of disabilities.

For most of you, fitness is a choice.

It is Science!!!

Well, not really. Vox, however, illustrates a point that I spent no small amount of time making during my tour of duty at Southern Baptist Theological Cemetary::

Clearly, a bright line needs to be delineated between scientific evidence that has been independently replicated by experiment, scientific evidence that could be independently replicated but has not been, and scientific evidence that cannot be independently replicated by experiment. And furthermore, it is necessary to stop giving the latter two types of scientific evidence, or more properly, potential scientific evidence, the same level of credence that is given to actual scientific evidence that has been reliably and independently replicated.

I recall a spat I had with one of the leftists who clamored that anyone contesting the anthropogenic global warming dogma was either ignorant or stupid. I pointed out to him that, when you cut through the B.S., there are basically three types of scientific “information”:

(1) Scientific fact: that which has been demonstrated and replicated experimentally;

(2) Scientific opinion: hypotheses which have not, but potentially (key word there) could be–experimentally verified;

(3) Scientific opinion that gets reported as fact: hypotheses that have not been proven through experimentation, but nonetheless get reported as Holy Writ.

Examples of (1): Newtons Laws of Motion; the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

Examples of (2): various theories regarding the behavior of subatomic particles. On one hand, there are observational bases for the hypotheses; OTOH some of those hypotheses are yet to be conclusively verified through experimentation.

Examples of (3): anthropogenic global warming; various theories of evolution; premises that embryonic stem cells hold the promise for the cure for everything from jock itch to the deadliest cancers.

When arguing on such matters on this space, I have a simple warning: don’t bother coming over here spewing opinion and then telling me “it is science” if you have no experimental basis to show.

I will call BS every time.

Whether you are arguing for macro-evolution, global warming, or even young earth creationism, we require honesty here:

(1) There is a huge difference between that which has been demonstrated by experimentation versus mere opinions about observations. We will never begrudge you for your opinion, but don’t come over here telling us how “scientific” it is if it is not.

(2) We must be honest about the limits of science. Science is great for understanding natural phenomena that can be duplicated via experimentation. That understanding has driven the development of no small number of technologies. If you can read this, you are enjoying the fruits of science.

OTOH, there are things that science CANNOT do for you.

Science cannot prove there is a God, let alone which model of God–Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc., or even no God–is valid. I can point to science to make a rational case for faith in a higher authority, but it would be less than intellectually honest to give you an article of faith and then tell you it is scientific.

Science cannot establish the veracity of miracle accounts, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc. Again, those are articles of faith.

At best, archaeology can help establish facts, but even that has limits: you are limited to what has been discovered to date. 150 years ago, Biblical skeptics touted the lack of archaeological evidence for Biblical accounts. Since then, archaeology has been quite favorable–rather than destructive–to Biblical accounts. In the world of Biblical scholarship, conservatives have made advances that liberals never thought possible 50 years ago.

Even then, archaeology is not science. What you are dealing with is observable data of varying quality, not experimental data that is reproducible.

Discuss

There is enough here to offend just about everyone.

I’m seeing a few things here:

(1) Docs are inadequately trained in the area of nutrition. This is not a new fact.
(2) Docs largely have no idea how to address this issue in their patients. It’s easy enough to deal with matters such as cancer, asthma, and other medical conditions that are not often tied to behavior. But confronting obesity–which, with some exception, is a condition that is tied to behavior–usually means confronting lifestyle. No one likes to be told they are responsible for their condition.
(3) Many docs are harder on women than men, even though obesity stats are pretty much even between the sexes.
(4) Many women will be offended, no matter how the doc tries to address the (almost literal) 900 pound elephant in the room.