Game Theory: STDs – To Tell, or not to Tell Part 1 of 4

A while back there was an ad on the subway by HIV Stigma (www.hivstigma.com), and it posted a thought-provoking question: “If you were rejected every time you disclosed, would you?”

My first reaction to that question was indignant. Of course you have to disclose! It’s a matter of basic human decency! That’s someone else’s health, or even  life,  on the line there. Framing the question this way almost make it sound like it’s justifying people who don’t disclose.

My second reaction was: you know, if you look at it from the infected people’s point of view, the question becomes that of human nature. And if public educators are going to be successful in encouraging good behaviour (and the uninfected population is to learn how to protect itself), the first step is to understand the bad behaviour.

Think about that silly classic movie scene. Two people in the heat of passion, and right before “doing it,” one pauses and asks, “Er, you’re clean right?” And the other replies, “Of course!” Resume course right away.

The thing is, if a partner is clean, he’ll tell you he is. If he’s not, he’ll tell you he is anyways. Yet if everybody (both boys and girls) does that, the disease will spread rapidly in the population. Making people do the right thing is very hard indeed, especially if they don’t want to admit having it to themselves.

We live in a culture that spends plenty of time glorifying sex, but not nearly enough time talking about its consequences. Since there are zillions of articles out there teaching people to have great sex already, I decided to take a less-travelled road and talk about the not-so-pretty and not-much-talked-about side of our sexual culture.

So here’s a moral question: If you found out that you’re carrying an STD, would you tell your current partner? Would you tell your past partners? Let’s play devil’s advocate and see how someone who’s not so ethical might think in such a circumstance.

Here’s the underlying problem. Self-identification has no apparent benefit (except appeasing the conscience) but does carry a heavy price:

-The price of not getting laid

-The price of facing your partner’s anger

-The price of not looking cool (it’s one thing to call up an old flame after getting an Oscar, it’s quite another to call him up regarding genital herpes).

-The price of facing the fact that you’re infected

-The price of word of your infection being spread around the grape vine. That’s one’s reputation on the line. This is especially bad if one is in one of those incestuous social groups where everybody eventually slept with everybody else. Or if your partner has some mean and mouthy friends and it’s all over Twitter by the time you take a cab home.

(continued in my next post...)