Ignorance Is Bliss: Why HIV Rates May Be Spiking In Utah

A new analysis of a federal survey completed in 2001 may be shedding light on why STD rates and HIV infections have risen dramatically in the state of Utah.

The survey of 11,000 students in seventh through 12th grade in 1995, 1996 and 2001 shows that more than half of teens were sexually active before marriage, and the data was the same for those students who had taken a "virginity pledge" to abstain from sex. But -- and this is the worst part -- those youths who had taken the pledge were less likely to have used condoms or contraceptives to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Abstinence should be the ideal way to prevent STDs and premarital pregnancies, but research shows that young people who rely solely on self-restraint coupled with a lack of sex education are courting disaster in the forms of disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Utah, a state where Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doctrine and conservative beliefs about abstinence-only education prevail, is an example of the failure of "just say no" as a way to protect teens.

The HIV infection rate was up 32 percent in Salt Lake County in 2007 over the previous year, and people age 15-24 are most at risk. The rate of STD infections in Utah is increasing at nearly four times the national average, and the state health department reported this year that gonorrhea cases increased more than 280 percent and chlamydia cases more than 60 percent since 2001 statewide. Utah mirrors national teen pregnancy rates, which were decreasing earlier in this decade, but increased in 2006. Salt Lake City Tribune