Us Health Officials Propose Using a Cheap Antibiotic as a “Morning-After Pill” Against STDs
U.S. health officials plan to endorse a common antibiotic as a morning-after pill that gay and bisexual men can use to try to avoid some increasingly common sexually transmitted diseases.
Err, breeding antibiotic resistant STIs?
‘Some research has found it ineffective in heterosexual women’ – well that’s rather remarkable drug specificity.
Didn;t see that. I could imagine differences in topical uses – given the differences in tabs and slots in adding topical coverings. But pills? Yeah, weird.
Because the average heterosexual woman doesn’t indulge in risky enough behaviour to make it worthwhile would be my guess, rather than the drug itself being ineffective. I’ve read nothing about it though, so that is just a guess.
Heterosexual women don’t regularly bum hundreds of anonymous, condomless strangers and/or those household pets who mysteriously caught monkeypox for reasons the NHS is uninterested in.
So you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to benefit from a post-coital antibiotic.
You never know who you might bump into in a bus queue or a polling booth so you should take them all the time. After all it worked for the covid vaccines and the boosters. And US farmers do it for livestock, and EU farmers do it for chickens.
The article in question doesn’t say this , at all…. Effect, yes. As is to be expected. By those margins/numbers? Nope, not even close..
The news article also doesn’t say that 40% of people participating in that test were under treatment for HIV, and the other 60% on HIV preventatives. Which is the cause for the “with previous STD infections”..
Which…. well… It speaks of their personal habits regarding STI awareness and prevention.
As far as resistance development goes…
Looks like they only checked for Gonorrhea, and unsurprisingly the Doxy group had higher occurences of resistant infections. Compared to the “control” group, where they occurred as well ( at a whopping 12-13%)..
Thing is, for the Doxy group this is most likely** not the result of the bacteria gaining resistance through mutation, but rather “environmental selection”.
Given that the article doesn’t split the occurences between HiV and non-HIV infected cases, you can’t even tell whether or not that is a factor, since Doxy only stops bacteria/moulds from growing, It doesn’t kill bacteria, that’s up to an infected person’s immune system.
When it comes to Doxy, or tetracyclines in general, the risk of mutation is pretty small and limited, because of what they act upon, and the margins of error possible with that particular protein ( a specific ribosome ), which by neccessity is highly conservative.
There’s a good chance that after 40-50 years of widespread use most bugs sensitive to the stuff have …exhausted their options… already when it comes to resistance mutations.
Which means that, generally speaking, 99% of people isn’t at risk, for a given value of Risk.
To run a decent chance of running into these bugs to begin with, you’d have to adopt the lifestyle of the subjects of this study.
Which… isn’t most peoples’ Cup of Tea.. to put it politely.
** This is Biology. Where Murphy and Mother Nature are waiting for you to make a definite statement and spite you.. You learn to hedge your bets.
Is “bumping into someone at a bus queue or polling booth” the British equivalent of that Saudi millionaire who was found not guilty of rape due to his accidentally tripping and penetrating a sleeping teenage girl.
“My clothes accidentally fell off, I then slipped on a glace cherry and landed inside one of the men.”
Sir Norman Fry
My god Grikath debunking the panic of the day with facts and logic that simply won’t do. Around here we use snark and schoolboy humour.
I’d imagine the contributory lack of enthusiasm affecting both parties that contributes to “Lesbian Bed Death” makes them fairly resistant to STD’s. If only they could find a pill that reduces rampant domestic violence among the Daughters of Lesbos.
Not forgetting that it wasn’t just the household pets which were coming up with “out of context” monkey pox, but associated children. No wonder reports disappeared from the news headlines in double-quick time.
Can’t have the reality about vast numbers of gayers being child molesters getting out now, can we. That really would be “buggering the Bursar”.
JG – between that, the Pedo Gangs of Peace, and the now omnipresent LGBTQ grooming in schools/on the NHS, it’s astonishing how much effort the British establishment expends on facilitating wacky child molestation adventures.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, eh?
Can’t have the reality about vast numbers of gayers being child molesters getting out now, can we.
See also: the blokes in frocks
Dear John Galt, I don’t believe that gay men are any more susceptible to child-molesting than are straight men. In fact the biggest threat is the stepfather, and thereafter the grooming gang. Thus a citation is definitely needed. Gay women, well I don’t know. When boarding schools were often used as a place to park the kids while you got on with your life, randy housemistresses had a very good time of it.
Southerner
The late Maximilian Schell springs to mind, who is accused of molesting nieces, stepchildren etc etc.