Scare Headlines?

From the Times Online, we have Teens face obesity and infertility.

Scotsman.com goes with Health Warning to Fat, Smoking Teenagers .

I think The Independent wins out though, with Fat, infertile and mentally ill: future's bleak for adolescents, says BMA.

Scare Headlines?

What Scare Headlines?

From that last one -- they're all covering the same material, after all:

The next generation of adults is likely to be the fattest, most mentally disturbed and least fertile in history, doctors warned yesterday.

Teenagers who gorge on fast food, binge on alcohol and drugs, and indulge in promiscuous sex represent a public-health time bomb that could overwhelm the NHS, the British Medical Association (BMA) said. One fifth of youngsters aged 13 to 16 are overweight and a quarter of those aged 16 to 19 smoke at least once a week. British adolescents are drinking more than ever, and have one of the highest levels of alcohol use in Europe.

Their sexual health is also suffering, with as many as one in 10 girls aged 16 to 19 infected with chlamydia, a sexually-transmitted disease which can make sufferers infertile.

Checking the CDC 2002 National STD Surveillance Report:

In 2002, the overall rate of reported chlamydial infection among women in the U.S. (455.4 cases per 100,000 females) was over 3 times higher than the rate among men (130.1 cases per 100,000 males), likely reflecting a greater number of women screened for this infection. The lower rates among men suggest that many of the sex partners of women with chlamydia are not diagnosed or reported. However, with the advent of highly sensitive nucleic acid amplification tests that can be performed on urine, symptomatic and asymptomatic men are increasingly being diagnosed with chlamydial infection. From 1998 to 2002, the chlamydial infection rate in males increased by 54.7% (from 84.1 to 130.1 cases per 100,000 males) compared with a 19.6% increase in women over this period (from 380.8 to 455.4 cases per 100,000 females).

For women, the highest age-specific rates of reported chlamydia in 2002 were among 15- to 19-year-olds (2,619.1 per 100,000 females) and 20- to 24-year-olds (2,570.1 per 100,000 females). Age-specific rates among men, while substantially lower than the rates in women, were highest in the 20- to 24-year-olds.

In 2002, the rate of chlamydia among African-American females in the U.S. was 8 times higher than the rate among white females (1,638.3 and 202.5 per 100,000, respectively). The chlamydia rate among African-American males was 12 times higher than that among white males (573.7 and 48.6 per 100,000 respectively).

Math is hard, so I'm not going to run those numbers to determine the percentage. I'd probably get it wrong, anyway.

Not bothering looking up smoking, drinking or sexual activity rates either.

I'm sure they'd just scare me.