A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.
The survey showed that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant.
Not that I'm against sex-ed (because I've said elsewhere that I'm totally for it), but it sounds more to me like these kids need an education in biology.
Biologically speaking, what the hell does drinking bleach have to do with pregnancy? Or a shot of Mountain Dew? Or marijuana?
Maj wrote:Biologically speaking, what the hell does drinking bleach have to do with pregnancy?
Hey, the bleach is supposed to prevent HIV, not pregnancy. Of course, since it'll probably kill you, neither of those conditions will bother you afterwards.
Or a shot of Mountain Dew? Or marijuana?
Nothing. Seriously, this is all of a piece with 'you can't get pregnant your first time' or 'you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up,' or any of the other fables on this subject that have floated around since time immemorial.
Exactly my point. If these kids had a decent Biology class, this stuff shouldn't come up. But it's apparent that they're not being educated in normal school, let alone in sex ed.
At that point, as much as abstinence-only education sucks, it's clearly not the only contributor to the problem.
Maj wrote:If these kids had a decent Biology class, this stuff shouldn't come up.
I don't know, the biology I learned in high school was all mitosis, and structure of a cell, and evolutionary theory, and anatomy, and so on. There wasn't a lot about pharmacology of any sort. I could tell you that if you ingested bleach that it would proceed down the esophagus, into the stomach, and so on, but once the body absorbed it, who knows what it would do?
I mean, I know it would kill you, but that's because it says so on the bottle, not because of any biology I ever learned.
Wow. That's... just plain stupid. Clearly there's some kind of brain disease affecting most of Florida. Hell, it produced Jack Thompson, that should be evidence enough.
Crissa: that one might be just as bad. Bush doesn't like abortion (or euthanasia, yet he has a hard-on for war and the death penalty. Apparently it's only okay to kill someone if they are a human who is able to say "No, I don't consent to this." This sounds like it's just part of the "insane Christian syndrome", but I really can't tell how his mind* works**.), so one of the largest medical databases can't show anything relating to abortions, or risk losing their funding. Lame.
Ingestion: May cause methemoglobinemia, cyanosis (bluish discoloration of skin due to deficient oxygenation of the blood), convulsions, and death. Causes severe digestive tract burns with abdominal pain, vomiting, and possible death. Methemoglobinemia is characterized by dizziness, drowsiness, headache, shortness of breath, cyanosis (bluish discoloration of skin due to deficient oxygenation of the blood), rapid heart rate and chocolate-brown colored blood.
Ingestion: Do not induce vomiting. If victim is conscious and alert, give 2-4 cupfuls of milk or water. Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person. Get medical aid immediately.
I was thinking the same thing, Catharz. When I first read the English translation of that one, I absentmindedly rubbed my eyes... just after eating chilli (not habanero, granted) flavoured crisps. Didn't half sting, but more important was the degree of stupidity involved there.
Okay, I live in Florida. I have lived in Florida all of my life. I have been through the Florida education system. It is a bad system, we will happily admit that we suck at education (there is not enough funding, and every vote that is pro-education gets voted down by the majority of the voting population, which are retirees). However, I do not understand how these things can be believed. I do not believe any of these things, nor do I know anyone who went through the Florida education system that believes these things.
I am a small sample, having gone to a magnet school and now in college, but seriously? I mean really? Mountain Dew prevents pregnancy? Where do you even get that started?
SunTzuWarmaster wrote:Mountain Dew prevents pregnancy? Where do you even get that started?
Somebody wants to have sex, but their partner is concerned about consequences, so a myth is concocted to allay those concerns. The myth might be believed because the partner is stupid, or because the partner is horny enough to want to believe.
The partner is not entirely convinced, and so after the act goes looking for external confirmation, asking "is it true that X prevents pregnancy/STDs," and through the game of telephone that is human society, the words 'is it true that' fall off; again because people want to think that consequence-free sex is easily available.
Ah, so "if a syringe is dropped in bleach, you still wouldn't want to use it, but the HIV has been killed off at least." turns into "bleach kills HIV" which turns into "drink bleach to prevent/cure HIV".
I thought grown ups were smart enough not to drink things clearly labelled as toxic. But then again, plenty of people still huff paint, so I guess not.
By the way, there actually is a reason that children think that marijuana or mountain dew will stop pregnancy. There actually is a reason that people think that bleach will stop HIV.
One of the big scare tactics that people use to try to get people to stop smoking dope is to tell them that smoking pot lowers your sperm count (which technically, it does, not that it matters much considering the many orders of magnitude more sperm you make than are required to do the job). So you tell kids this over and over again during misguided anti-drug tirades and then when it comes down to the wire they think that they can stop fertility by smoking weed.
As to bleaching, it's a way to prevent needles from carrying infection. IV drug users are supposed to bleach their needles to prevent the spread of HIV. But people at needle exchanges aren't allowed into the classrooms to explain exactly how to do this or what it's for in case somehow telling people exactly how IV drugs spread infections from person to person would somehow encourage heroin use among junior high school students.
So children get the Bleach vs. HIV story third hand, often from junkies. And then they don't know how it works, and we become very sad.
Wow. So we have kids who are stupid enough to come to those conclusions (and also stupid enough to believe what adults tell them), and adults who are stupid in the ideas they come up with to stop kids from taking drugs.
Interesting drug fact: learning new things and figuring out solutions to problems both actually feel good - it's not just satisfaction. The reason for this is the location of the opioid receptors in the brain. Those receptors receive (minor) activity when things are learned and worked out within the brain, thus you feel good as a result and even feel a bit refreshed, leading to people continuing to work at a series of problems.
This probably is not related to drug use within learning establishments. Uni students just like to get off their face on things the government tells them not to have, and wake up in strange places with no recollection of previous events.
Anyway, at least I now see how they came to these crazy conclusions, but still, most people should know better than to listen to what adults tell them (about these things or anything else, really), and should stay away from anything that sounds even remotely like an urban legend. Even when I believed in a huge invisible sky fairy who hates us all and will destroy us but also loves us and needs our money, I still wouldn't have believed that crap.
