Do condoms protect you from STDs and pregnancy?If you are young and sexually active or are considering becoming sexually active, this is a critical question. In the U.S. today there is a growing epidemic of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). It is estimated that over 65 million people are now infected and 19 million new infections occur each year. Almost half of these new infections occur in young people 15-24 years old.1 Some of these infections are simply embarrassing and treatable with antibiotics, but others are much more dangerous. Some STDs are incurable, life-long infections. Some can lead to life-threatening diseases and even death. In your parent’s day, the major STDs were syphilis and gonorrhea.2 Today the list has grown to perhaps 25 STDs that should concern every young person...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened a symposium in June of 2000 to find the answer to this question. Experts were selected from many fields and scientific studies were gathered. Only those studies which met rigorous requirements were selected. This included the condition that a study be "peer reviewed" by other scientists for publication in scientific journals. Those 138 studies were used to draw conclusions. Here is what they found:
There is no clinical proof that condoms are effective in reducing the risk of infection from chlamydia, genital herpes, HPV*, syphilis, chancroid or trichomoniasis. Some protection was found for men against gonorrhea infection, but not for women. Condoms were found to reduce the risk of HIV/AIDs transmission during vaginal sex by 85% when used consistently (every time a person has sex, without exception) and "correctly" (following a specific 6 step procedure).3 Using condoms 100% of the time still leaves a 15% risk of HIV infection compared to not using condoms at all. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, a routinely fatal disease.
What this means is that you can be infected with any STD even when using condoms 100% of the time....
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