Young People's Guide to
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs)
and AIDS/HIV Disease
by Dr. Robert Taylor
Director: Health Awareness Connection
Research Fellow,
Harvard Aids Institute 1993-95
Staff Physician, Boston City Hospital STD Clinic
- Index of images
- Complete list of STDs
- Short STD guide in various languages
- Reproductive anatomy Diagrams
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Message to parents
- Anatomy of the sex organs
- Physiology of the sex organs
- STDs
- How to check yourself for STDs
- AIDS
- How to prevent getting STDs and AIDS
- How to use a condom
Introduction
The purpose of this online book is to help teenagers and anyone else who is interested to learn a little about themselves and hopefully to enable them to avoid getting a sexually transmitted disease including AIDS.Sexually transmitted diseases have become a little less common in the general population of the United States during the past few years but they have remained epidemic among adolescents. One in seven US teens will get an STD by the time they graduate from high school. At the time this was written (1994), one in forty high school students in Washington DC are infected with the AIDS virus. Two and a half million teens will get a sexually transmitted disease this year.
The diseases that are shown in this book all have two things in common. The first is that they are all spread by unprotected sex. The other is that they are all preventable. If you are not having sex, you will not get or spread STDs. The exception to this is that certain diseases including AIDS and hepatitis can be spread by injecting drug users who share needles and from mother's to their newborn children..
One of the keys to prevention is caring.
Just learning about these diseases will not necessarily protect you from getting an
STD including HIV disease but it can influence a young person not to have sex or
to use a condom if she or he does.