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autographedcatSo here's a question I put out there to my friends who have expertise with sexual health. (Or even just an opinion on the matter.)
A friend of mine is recently starting to become socially active, having become single a couple of years ago. He's already involved in a casual friends-with-benefits relationship, and there's something on his horizon that may be developing.
At some point, I recommended to him that as long as he's dating, he should get an STD test periodically. Particularly if he's going to be involved with more than one person at one time, I consider it an ethical responsibility. He agreed, and said that since he was already due for his annual physical, he'd ask them to run it at the same time.
Yesterday, he told me that he'd had that appointment, and that his doctor had refused to order the panel:
To which I said: "You should fire your doctor. That's not only wrong, it's completely irresponsible."
This goes beyond my usual insistence that as the consumer, you have the right to have a say in setting your own health priorities. I'm flabbergasted that a doctor would, in 2012, tell a sexually active person that there's no point in getting STD screening as a preventing measure.
Am I overreacting, or is this utterly bizarre?
A friend of mine is recently starting to become socially active, having become single a couple of years ago. He's already involved in a casual friends-with-benefits relationship, and there's something on his horizon that may be developing.
At some point, I recommended to him that as long as he's dating, he should get an STD test periodically. Particularly if he's going to be involved with more than one person at one time, I consider it an ethical responsibility. He agreed, and said that since he was already due for his annual physical, he'd ask them to run it at the same time.
Yesterday, he told me that he'd had that appointment, and that his doctor had refused to order the panel:
His rationale, insofar as I could read it, was "They aren't reliable past the first ten minutes after you have them, so wait until you have a stable partner and then get tested together.
To which I said: "You should fire your doctor. That's not only wrong, it's completely irresponsible."
This goes beyond my usual insistence that as the consumer, you have the right to have a say in setting your own health priorities. I'm flabbergasted that a doctor would, in 2012, tell a sexually active person that there's no point in getting STD screening as a preventing measure.
Am I overreacting, or is this utterly bizarre?
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 09:43 pm (UTC)Yes, you could test clean this afternoon and pick something up tonight. There's always that chance. You would, however, at least have a baseline understanding of what your STI status is right now. If there's something you needed treated, you can have that done; if there's something you need to warn potential partners about, you can do that. If you do not currently have any STI's, congratulations.
In addition, if you have multiple partners you should be practicing extremely safe sex _anyway_, so you should be lowering your chances of picking something up tonight by taking good precautions. One of those precautions is getting yourself tested periodically.
It sounds like his doctor was speaking from a point of monogamy. With a monogamous person, yes, that's the best way to do things. But with someone who isn't monogamous, it's a more, uh, fluid situation and you need to test periodically regardless of when you are adding new partners.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 10:00 pm (UTC)It's not just about protecting your OWN health, but the healthy of the people you're going to be interacting with. Knowing going into the dating scene that you've got a clean bill of health is important.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 02:43 am (UTC)