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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

I think the 1960's unprotected sex wave was more a symptom of ignorance of STDs. People used to see condoms as primarily for birth control, and not really a sanitary measure. Remember, the birth control pill came out in the 1960s!

Even then, knowledge of condoms wasn't widespread like it is now. My grandmother was super-pissed-off when my grandfather told her about them after she was pregnant for 18 months straight! She made it a point to tell me that I had to tell my future wife about birth control! (What made it funnier was that, at the time, if you didn't know what a condom was you were living under a very large rock!)

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Ignorance of STDs was okay in 1960s, because antibiotics worked really great back then and just about every STD was easily curable.

This is being downvoted to oblivion but I'm not sure if it's true or not; hopefully someone can weigh in before it disappears.

Well hepatitis C wasn't and isn't easily curable, but i guess awareness of it was pretty low.

Is a stronger statement that hepatitis C is NOT curable, as it's a retroviral infection, thereby rewriting host DNA? [ Edit: i'd remembered incorrectly from decades ago: it's an RNA virus ]

To be clear, hepatitis C now has a 95+% cure rate with modern treatments.

>hepatitis C is NOT curable, as it's a retroviral infection

Hepatitis C isn't a retrovirus, so I don't understand what you're saying.

There's a cure for Hepatitis C since 2015.

Doesn't seem likely. Do you have data on this?

Importantly, while the bacterial STIs were curable, Herpes was definitely not.

Herpes wasn't considered a disease at the time. It was not pathologized until later.

This is more or less true. The pharmacy company Burroughs Wellcome is largely blamed for pathologizing "genital herpes" starting in the late 70s.

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ypa8nb/did-big-pharma...

Wait a second. With heroes you get painful, oozing sores on your genitals. It sometimes never goes away and can flare up at any time.

Does it really take a company to make people think of it as a disease?

"Oh my penis feels like it's on fire and oozing all over me. However, I wouldn't call it a disease."

AIUI it wasn’t considered a disease similar to how cold sores aren’t.

And HPV wasn't linked with cervical cancer yet - that doesn't mean it wasn't a disease. And I'm comfortable calling HSV-2 a disease based on the potential congenital consequences alone.

It's certainly a manageable one, and the stigma around it is silly, but if the common cold is a disease, then herpes is.

The 'sexwave' was in the 70's when studio54 was a thing and disco and cocaine became common/popular/big in the mainstream culture (famously captured by the film Staying Alive).

Also the legalization of abortion in 1972 contributed to this as well.

The 'sexwave' was all of human history up to the Industrial Revolution... then another in the 70s with development of the birth control pill and no known significantly dangerous STDs. Interestingly, the USA was viewed as the vanguard of sexual progressivism in the 1970s and places like France were seen as provincial backwaters. There's a great book about Frances attempt to modernize their views to be more progressive called 'Good Sex Illustrated'. If you're interested in the ways in which sex education can be stilted to promote extremely conservative antiquated mindsets, it includes a multitude of examples. It is remarkably relevant because it's basically exactly what American educators and parents inflict on kids today.

They may be referencing the Summer of Love (1967) and the Free Love movement which was, if I had to put dates to it, 1966 to 1972.

During those times there were lots of people having lots of sex. Unwashed sex with a string scent of sandalwood and patchouli, but still lots of sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

Then you had the disco era, fueled by fruity drinks and cocaine, sideburns, and lots of finger guns. There was still a bunch of sex. Those people would become yuppies, while many of the Free Love people would have moved into the woods to eat tree bark and become one with Gaia.

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