Public Service Announcement, Radio: AIDS
TINA: Hey, Gina! So I heard that you and Billy have been going steady for a while now.
GINA: Yeah. We love each other. It’s cute.
TINA: So have you had sex yet?!
GINA: Tina!! You know that I made a chastity pledge back in the third grade! You were there!
TINA: Oh, yeah. I remember now. That was a pretty cool ring. The chastity ring, that is. The one that binds you to virginity until marriage, and if you end up deciding to have sex before then that you have to give up. And you can never wear it again. Didn’t your parents pay a lot of money for it? I think they did.
GINA: Yeah. I wear it everyday, and they check to make sure I’m still wearing it everyday. It motivates me to not have sex. But I barely need the motivation in the first place because I have so much support from my family and friends that I barely even think about sex. I’m waiting until I find the perfect person who I will spend the rest of my life with.
TINA: That’s cool. Just don’t be one of the 88 percent of teenage girls who break their chastity vows before marriage, most of which do within a few years!
GINA: Don’t worry! I won’t be!
TINA: I’m glad. You, know, I care a lot about you, Gina, and I just want you to be aware that girls who take chastity pledges are less likely to use condoms and less likely to seek testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, because if they end up giving in to their natural sexual urges, they would rather pretend it isn’t happening, and if it isn’t happening, they see no need to use protection, because that just makes it seem like it is happening.
GINA: Thanks for the tip, Tina! But you don’t have to worry, because I really will never have sex until I’m happily married at the age of 40.
TINA: Me too! We can not worry about contracting HIV/AIDS together! Because, you know, the only for sure way to not have to worry about it is by being sex-free!
GINA: Yeah!… Wait, a minute, Tina—I was already planning on abstinence, but I don’t know all the facts about AIDS. Can you fill me in?
TINA: I could, but here comes Jed. The kid who had sex before he was married. And ended up with human immunodeficiency virus. I’m sure he’d be happy to fill you in!
JED: Hey, guys!
TINA and GINA: Hey, Jed!
GINA: Jed, Tina tells me that you had sex before you were emotionally ready for it and now have HIV. Would you mind telling me about it?
JED: Sure! Yeah. I figure that because I can’t do anything to go back in time and save myself, I might as well go around as a sort of living sexual martyr figure and spread the word of abstinence.
TINA: That’s sooo cool! What a great idea!
JED: It’s the best I can do. Here, let me give you the run-down: You can’t contract AIDS from another person, but you can get HIV, which leads to AIDS, through contact with various bodily fluids, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. This majority of HIV/AIDS cases are in result of unprotected sexual relations, when one partner has the disease and their sexual secretion comes into contact with the genital, oral, or rectal mucous membranes of the other partner. This is why it’s better to just wait until you’re married, because if you know that you don’t have HIV, and your partner doesn’t have HIV, and you two are the only ones you have sex with, then you won’t have to worry about contracting the disease.
GINA: Okay… but what happens if you get it? Is it really that bad?
JED: You betcha! What HIV does is it makes the body incredibly and dangerously susceptible to otherwise not-so-harmful infections. That means that what your body could normally handle, now becomes possibly lethal. Personally, I know that I don’t have AIDS yet because I don’t have any of the symptoms. But if you see me with fevers, sweats (particularly at night), swollen glands, chills, weakness, and weight loss, skin rashes, oral ulcerations, and various respiratory infections, you’ll know that I probably have developed AIDS.
TINA: How long will it take you to get AIDS?
JED: Probably between five and eight years, but with some people it takes even longer.
GINA: Can’t you just take medicine to make it go away?
JED: Sadly, no. The scary thing about the epidemic is that as of yet there is no cure.
GINA: That is scary!
JED: Yeah. The only for sure way to prevent it is by preventing exposure to the potential causes. Which is what I’m advising you guys to do. However, there are various medications that are used to reduce the risk of an infection after known exposure. I’m currently taking some of these, and they aren’t very fun, but these antiretroviral treatments reduce both the mortality and the morbidity of the HIV infection, so I’m happy to take them. Unfortunately, these agents are expensive, and the majority of the world's infected individuals do not have access to medications and treatments for HIV and AIDS, making it much more common in poorer areas and countries with higher rates of poverty.
GINA: So that’s why AIDS is such a bigger problem in Africa than in the United States!
TINA: And that’s why you shouldn’t have sex.
JED: Right, but it still is an enormous problem here in the States.
GINA: Oh, yeah, like you.
JED: I’m glad that I could at least tell you guys that the only way to stay safe is to be abstinent, since it’s too late to save myself!
TINA: Boy, I’m sure glad we were lucky enough to have abstinence-only education written into our welfare reform bill 1996. Think how many kids it must have saved already! I’m so afraid of HIV/AIDS that I’m not going to have sex until I’m happily married.
GINA: Me too.
JED: That’s great, guys. I’m glad I could fulfill my role as the sort of living sexual martyr figure and promote abstinence. My work here is done.
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