Craigslist personals associated with 16 percent boost in HIV infections

Quick and easy personals could potentially have a serious downside.

Read the whole story

 

[HeidiMann]

name99[/url]":2o7tbzf3]I suspect there is a LOT of money to be made in an ANONYMOUS personals verification service
....
This requires a provide them every three months with a medical clean bill of health...

1 down vote for you sir. A person can get infected with an STD, be contagious, yet not have said STD show up on tests for several months.

The fact that there are still ignorant people such as the OP who still do not understand this is still a big problem.

 

[RRob]

sdsd8282[/url]":1ryngoqf]FYI, this paper is *littered* with flaws and HIV experts are working on various responses.
[...]
This is a stellar example of what happens when folks with cookbook statistical prowess wade into a completely foreign content area.

Yes, long time experience says to ignore the first report on any topic. ESPECIALLY when it sounds like almost perfect click bait.

If it's real, many more independent groups will confirm it. If it's fake, many more independent groups will refute it. Just like all the times before.

 

[ziegler]

mrnomnoms[/url]":2p5190wk]

CppThis[/url]":2p5190wk]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Here was me thinking that the cause of STD's were people not using protection. Honestly, we're in 2015 and people still aren't using condoms? do we need to start handing out fines for people who fail to use condoms and contract and STD? I'm all for having a casual hook up but Jesus H Christ you'd think people would think about their health and protect themselves.

Been having unprotected sex for 20 years now, never once used a condom in that time and don't have no STD"s....

I also happen to be faithful to my wife and her to me.

 

[operagost]

mrnomnoms[/url]":27elc52d]

CppThis[/url]":27elc52d]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Here was me thinking that the cause of STD's were people not using protection. Honestly, we're in 2015 and people still aren't using condoms? do we need to start handing out fines for people who fail to use condoms and contract and STD? I'm all for having a casual hook up but Jesus H Christ you'd think people would think about their health and protect themselves.

Why do you think we have so many single moms now? Apparently, "it doesn't feel as good" is a good enough excuse not to use a condom. I have two in-laws who each have children from 3 different partners, and another who has children from two different partners-- and it's not due to death or divorce. Naturally, they are both relying on the state and other family members for their livelihood, since it's hard to get by when you have lots of unplanned shorties about. These folks who are getting HIV also don't seem to feel having a lifelong illness that will likely kill you is enough of a reason to "not feel as good" either. These people trade what they really want for what they want RIGHT NOW.

 

[operagost]

nehinks[/url]":115r3pbr]Did they break it down by gender or orientation? A quick look seems to show a very high proportion of the ads are gay guys.

I'm pretty sure that's not allowed in today's hyper-PC environment-- no matter what value it might have. And the two SJWs who voted you down at this point seem to agree.

Edit: and the SJW who predictably voted me down. Shameful.

 

[fxds]

HeidiMann[/url]":1ci0ebsu]

name99[/url]":1ci0ebsu]I suspect there is a LOT of money to be made in an ANONYMOUS personals verification service
....
This requires a provide them every three months with a medical clean bill of health...

1 down vote for you sir. A person can get infected with an STD, be contagious, yet not have said STD show up on tests for several months.

The fact that there are still ignorant people such as the OP who still do not understand this is still a big problem.

And a down vote for you as well, sir. STD tests are not a perfect indicator, but that doesn't mean they're worthless and anyone who pays attention to one is ignorant. The simple fact is some people want to engage in casual sex, some of that group are willing to at least make a real effort to be safe about it, and STD tests, while imperfect, have some value for those people. A service like name99 described would have a use among that subgroup. Personally I suspect that such a service would never get off the ground for a variety of practical reasons, but that doesn't make the idea itself or the expression of it a problem.

All sex involves some degree of risk. Even in a presumably monogamous relationship where both individuals were presumably virgins before the relationship began, it's always possible that your partner has lied or cheated. It seems to me that any idea that encourages people to be responsible and decrease their level of risk, especially among those who choose to engage in practices (such as craigslist hookups) that are toward the riskier end of the spectrum, should be encouraged rather than insulted and down voted.

 

[Lostfanboi]

Soooooo....you're saying that creepy dudes looking for late night bareback hookups might not be the safest of choices for sexual encounters? What shocking news!

What this study has REALLY taught me is that I really need to figure out a way to get in on some of this grant money.

 

[rick*d]

Malth[/url]":3slxy93u]I don't use the casual encounters section, but CL is, imo, about the best place on the internet to meet women.

There's your problem.

 

[mikedelhoo]

operagost[/url]":3n57gfwh]

Edit: and the SJW who predictably voted me down. Shameful.

Sure, it must be because of "SJW"s, not because of your ridiculous assertion that studies involving gender and sexual orientation are not allowed.

 

[mjb86]

Been having unprotected sex for 20 years now, never once used a condom in that time and don't have no STD"s....

I also happen to be faithful to my wife and her to me.

So you've got the Chastity Master 9000! Hell of a device. Bluetooth capable!

 

[Viking ZX]

Personally, an interesting but unsurprising result.

Then again, I'm one of those people who thinks that the whole "sex as a responsibility-free commodity" attitude is definitely driving some of these problems (edit: widespread STDs, etc), so I'd already be expecting results along these lines.

 

[flish]

nehinks[/url]":k8v7grxm]Did they break it down by gender or orientation? A quick look seems to show a very high proportion of the ads are gay guys.

You might be onto something.
Here in France we actually have a sharp increase in new HIV infections in the gay communit - enough to warrant tv documentaries on several channels about how much not fun life with HIV / SIDA is.

 

[godel]

Meanwhile over on Gizmag; "Scientists have developed a smartphone accessory capable of detecting multiple disease markers within 15 minutes"

http://www.gizmag.com/smartphone-dongle ... tes/35938/

They've invented a dongle to test the health of your dangle. Maybe Craigslist should buy a bulk supply and sell them to subscribers at a discount.

 

[Eurynom0s]

How much of this is people randomly hooking up with each other and how much of this is from people finding prostitutes via Craigslist personals?

Such a travesty on so many levels that there was that big state AG push to close down the Craigslist prostitution section.

 

[MPerz]

Geonerd[/url]":348uyfb8]Wow, another BRILLIANT, groundbreaking bit of click-bait from Timmer and Ars.
Sex with strangers exposes you to STDs?!
WHOA!! Simply amazing! Whooda thunk it?!

(Do you people have any journalistic standards? Any whatsoever?)

They're reporting on a study, not conducting the study themselves. It may be weak and ripe for peer scrutiny, but as far as I know it's the first of its kind and thus merits interest.

 

[datanerd]

umbrel[/url]":1mqtgvyz]

mrnomnoms[/url]":1mqtgvyz]

CppThis[/url]":1mqtgvyz]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Here was me thinking that the cause of STD's were people not using protection. Honestly, we're in 2015 and people still aren't using condoms? do we need to start handing out fines for people who fail to use condoms and contract and STD? I'm all for having a casual hook up but Jesus H Christ you'd think people would think about their health and protect themselves.

While lab test shows that the latex barrier can stop all the virus, other test results about the uncontrolled real life usage of condoms, shows that a sock made of a delicate barrier, placed by an operator under not quite cool headed conditions, after being stored who knows how long, in unsuitable conditions (think the car glovebox). Well the estimates for actual effectivity goes down to about 70%, think of playing russian rulette with 2 cartridges in the drum.
Of course if the condoms are used new after proper storage and checked to be properly in place, they work much closer to the theoretical effectiveness.

I hate to be a citation needed kind of person, but Is that 70% for preventing pregnancy over a year, the standard measure of effectiveness of birth control, or is it just for HIV? Or for all STDs?

 

[bthylafh]

Jawbox[/url]":3cebjcy4]I'm more shocked that anyone has actually ever has actually hooked up over craigslist.

You must be young. There's always that one guy/gal who makes poor decisions.

 

[ampillion]

This is why I stick with legal brothels (only legal in Nevada). The brothels strictly enforce STD screenings for courtesans so clients like me don't have to worry about contracting STDs there.

 

[Rindan]

marcopolomint[/url]":1j5zme9d]I was wondering how long it would take for someone to roll out the 'correlation is not causation' chestnut. I assumed it would be in the comments, not someone from Columbia University who presumably only briefly looked over the article. From the description of the methodology this seems pretty solid and serious, and certainly wouldn't contradict any further evidence available from the uptake of apps like Tinder etc. So this could be a serious baseline to consider in terms of targeting information and advice to sectors of the public, with a rare glimpse of a 'before' and 'after' population.

Correlation does not equal causation is actually pretty relevant here. I wouldn't be shocked if the spread of something like Grinder mirrored the spread of Craigslist. All these technologies popped up more or less at the same time, and the things driving them to grow to certain areas are likely the same. It doesn't take much to throw your statistics if NYC, San Francisco, and Boston all adopt Craigslist at the same time that they adopt something like Grinder. Hell, even OkCupid could in part be driving this.

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe Craigslist like websites and maybe even Craigslist itself likely drive part of the problem. Just realize that Craigslist is going to correlate to a lot of other similarish websites that grew on the same technology.

All that said, it really isn't all that big of a jump. 16% of a small number is a small number. I personally am happy that technology is helping to fight its own anti-social tendencies. Stuff like Grinder, OkCupid, and even Craigslist has been a real boon for a lot of people. It is good to be reminded that unsafe sex practices can lead to bad things, but I hold no malice towards new ways for like minded folks to hook up.

As far as the prostitution angle goes; that is just what happens when you have a black market. Black markets are unsafe. If you wanted to stop the spread of STDs via prostitution, you would just legalize and regulate the trade. I know more than a couple of folks doing sex work, and for the legal ones, safety is job one. The ones that are forced into the black market tend to be much more lax when it comes to safety.

 

[FrankM]

Rindan[/url]":cp7iub35]Correlation does not equal causation is actually pretty relevant here. I wouldn't be shocked if the spread of something like Grinder mirrored the spread of Craigslist. All these technologies popped up more or less at the same time, and the things driving them to grow to certain areas are likely the same. It doesn't take much to throw your statistics if NYC, San Francisco, and Boston all adopt Craigslist at the same time that they adopt something like Grinder. Hell, even OkCupid could in part be driving this.

Suppose there was another, similar service rolling out at the same time and it was actually responsible for the increase in HIV and Craigslist was innocent. Then the authors wouldn't have found HIV rates increasing in tandem with Craigslist's roll-out in city after city after city.

Other small services rolling out on a very different schedule than Craigslist would add noise to the data and bias the effect toward zero.

The authors use a difference-in-differences estimator which asserts a type of Granger causality if the model assumptions are met. Difference-in-differences is not without its detractors, but it is worth noting that the authors of this study did do the robustness checks that account for the technique's weaknesses (which even if uncorrected only affect significance levels, without biasing the estimated effect size).

Now it's entirely appropriate for some epidemiologist to re-run this study using whatever is standard for exposure to a community-level risk factor, but calling the results mere correlation is unfair.

 

[Nait]

I don't agree with all of the judgements and shaming from the preceding comments. It clearly does not work. For years, women were forced to either have clandestine abortions or to adopt out their child for fear of persecution for having premarital see, yet people continued to have (unprotected) premarital sex. If people who choose to have an active sex life were to not only use protection but to also get regularly screened for HIV and STIs, those conditions would be consigned to history.

 

[nutjob2]

Jackattak[/url]":21pbjbjw]Nature creates diseases for a reason.

No it doesn't.

 

[captain_kirk]

Ralf The Dog[/url]":34z7cu4l]Computer virus?

The much less popular, albeit catchy, Zapp & Roger follow-up to "Computer Love".

 

[erendorn]

marcopolomint[/url]":1rcle1ym]I was wondering how long it would take for someone to roll out the 'correlation is not causation' chestnut. I assumed it would be in the comments, not someone from Columbia University who presumably only briefly looked over the article. From the description of the methodology this seems pretty solid and serious, and certainly wouldn't contradict any further evidence available from the uptake of apps like Tinder etc. So this could be a serious baseline to consider in terms of targeting information and advice to sectors of the public, with a rare glimpse of a 'before' and 'after' population.

This, and especially the targeting information part.
It seems like such services would be a good place to put warnings or information on STD risks, payed or legally forced, kind of like on cigarette packs.

 

[Aslan7]

@John_Timmer you're the science editor, why did you write the article and not post a/the solution? Truvada is a drug that blocks better than 99% of HIV infections when used as directed. Ars hasn't reported on it since 2010 http://meincmagazine.com/science/2010/12/ ... unners-up/ What if Craigslist promoted Truvada and saw a 50% drop in new HIV infections when Craiglist game to town?

@erendorn education is what matters not scare tactics. Educate people about the risk and prevention.

 

[Drakkenmensch]

schizrade[/url]":19hnfizo]I actually have a friend that works with a guy that got HIV infected due to his constant hookups on CL. It is a growing problem.

I tend not to trust "friend of a friend" stories. That's how all urban legends about hotel room kidney thieves and mexican giant rats mistaken for chihuahuas start.

 

[Marcos2247]

umbrel[/url]":3nx0kb7g]

mrnomnoms[/url]":3nx0kb7g]

CppThis[/url]":3nx0kb7g]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Here was me thinking that the cause of STD's were people not using protection. Honestly, we're in 2015 and people still aren't using condoms? do we need to start handing out fines for people who fail to use condoms and contract and STD? I'm all for having a casual hook up but Jesus H Christ you'd think people would think about their health and protect themselves.

While lab test shows that the latex barrier can stop all the virus, other test results about the uncontrolled real life usage of condoms, shows that a sock made of a delicate barrier, placed by an operator under not quite cool headed conditions, after being stored who knows how long, in unsuitable conditions (think the car glovebox). Well the estimates for actual effectivity goes down to about 70%

It's still 70% better than no condom.

 

[kray28]

MisterAlex[/url]":72uiyaft]I don't know that it's especially surprising that increased ease of access to anonymous casual sex could be responsible for an increase in the frequency of consequences that result from sexual intercourse with strangers.

Not surprising, but they were able to measure the driver effect. Most likely a multivariate logistic regression model.

 

[Drakkenmensch]

umbrel[/url]":xhg80aze]

mrnomnoms[/url]":xhg80aze]

CppThis[/url]":xhg80aze]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Here was me thinking that the cause of STD's were people not using protection. Honestly, we're in 2015 and people still aren't using condoms? do we need to start handing out fines for people who fail to use condoms and contract and STD? I'm all for having a casual hook up but Jesus H Christ you'd think people would think about their health and protect themselves.

While lab test shows that the latex barrier can stop all the virus, other test results about the uncontrolled real life usage of condoms, shows that a sock made of a delicate barrier, placed by an operator under not quite cool headed conditions, after being stored who knows how long, in unsuitable conditions (think the car glovebox). Well the estimates for actual effectivity goes down to about 70%, think of playing russian rulette with 2 cartridges in the drum.
Of course if the condoms are used new after proper storage and checked to be properly in place, they work much closer to the theoretical effectiveness.

If a parachute has a 1% chance to fail, jumping without one is still 100% chance to die.

 

[Shavano]

DarthSlack[/url]":3pbhpcyf]

CppThis[/url]":3pbhpcyf]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Cripes, it was anonymous casual sex that lead the the HIV epidemic the first time around. Apparently people absolutely never learn.

Odds are there are a lot of people doing it now that weren't doing it then.

 

[pqr]

Hesster56[/url]":htn1ayn3]

CppThis[/url]":htn1ayn3]Casual sex leads leads to getting an STD? I totally did not get that from common sense or 6+ years of having to take sex ed.

Why did you fail sex ed for five years?

Perhaps his course was more rigorous not only pure theory, so he kept failing on purpose

 

[Carbon Fibre]

Moral decline in our nation. Where sex outside loved ones and commonly out of wedlock is accepted, otherwise shamed.

 

[puddin-pop]

Yup, one of my sister's friends got HIV through Craigslist back in like '10

 

[heftysmurf]

If you talk to many people "out in the world" it's pretty clear that most people don't understand how HIV works, how it's actually transmitted, when a person becomes infectious, how it's tested for and how treatments for it function. The net result tends to be that most people believe that - if they become positive - they can take treatments for it indefinitely, and they'll be okay.

What the vast majority of people don't seem to understand is that:

(a) Treatments are exorbitantly expensive. In some countries they're subsidised of course, but I pity those where it isn't.

(b) There are different strains of HIV, with different types of evolved resistance to various drugs.

(c) Within an individual, HIV evolves over time even under good drug compliance. Eventually, HIV becomes resistant to the treatments that a person takes and they must either switch or their disease progresses.

(d) Drug compliance is far more easily said than done, and even small gaps provide breaks for reservoirs to re-establish infections and mutate resistance more rapidly.

(e) A person becomes infectious very rapidly after exposure - sometimes within days. They are most infectious during ths period as they don't know they're infectious, they are asymptomatic and the immune system has not yet responded to initial infection (so viral load is extremely high).

(f) Reliable testing using the antibody test theoretically demands a six month hiatus from last potential exposure, due to varying speeds at which various individuals respond. There is a qualitative RNA PCR test available at 10 days but it's not widely available and expensive. Many GPs aren't even aware of it, such is the siloed nature of up to date HIV knowledge.

Given the lack of general knowledge in the population (and the myth of long term drug-based protection) it's unsurprising that people are becoming more complacent about HIV transmission,

 

[Seraphiel]

Having unprotected sex with strangers == refusing to get vaccinated.

Entirely avoidable, and potentially deadly to the subject and random people they come into contact with later.

Did manufacturers start lining condoms with habanero oil or something? What the fuck is the aversion some people have to not dying from sex?

 

[Drakkenmensch]

Seraphiel[/url]":1am64zgp]Having unprotected sex with strangers == refusing to get vaccinated.

Entirely avoidable, and potentially deadly to the subject and random people they come into contact with later.

Did manufacturers start lining condoms with habanero oil or something? What the fuck is the aversion some people have to not dying from sex?

Haven't you noticed by now that whenever you tell someone something they do is dangerous, they just go "screw you pal!" and go at it even harder? It's like telling your sister that her boyfriend is bad news, you've just guaranteed that if she had even considered dumping his sorry ass, she's gonna tough him out just to spite you.