Condom users take some hard knocks

The Centers for Disease Control had some bad news for the condom-promotion crowd this week.

After decades of teaching teens in sex education classes that they can do whatever they want so long as they wear a condom, new statistics released Tuesday show that 1 in 4 teenage girls now has a sexually transmitted infection. Also, two recent studies found that among 15- to 24-year-old women receiving contraceptives, more than half do not receive appropriate counseling, screening or treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

On Wednesday, the CDC reported that syphilis cases in the United States climbed for the seventh straight year, largely due to increases among gays and blacks. Similar to the findings among young women, the CDC reported that few gay men are getting properly counseled or screened for sexually transmitted infections.

The total number of syphilis cases is still low at 11,181 last year, but 60 percent of those cases were among gay men, compared with 5 percent in 1999.

Among black men, cases jumped 25 percent last year. For black women, it was 12 percent.

The good news is that there is one device that has proven 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases whenever it’s used: a firmly zipped pair of pants.