I don’t know much about sexually transmitted diseases. My 10th grade health teacher – Coach Oates – spent more time threatening “ass whoopin’s”, cracking jokes, and talking football than he did teaching us about the birds, the bees, and STDs. The main source of information about STD threats was the media; growing up in the Nineties, the only STD worth mentioning seemed to be HIV – “the disease that causes AIDS”. A recent legal case in which a man was ordered to pay a woman $1.5 million highlights several inefficiencies. First, the legal system is shown to be stacked against men, once again. Second, the overblown AIDS crisis hurt women in one important way which – if cases like the one I’m going to discuss continue – has brought men down with it.
It wasn’t until college that I really heard any talk about other more common, albeit less serious sexually transmitted infections like HPV, herpes, chlamydia, etc. HPV causes cervical cancer; chlamydia can cause tubal pregnancies and serious health problems in women, yet sexually irresponsible children only hear about the Big One: HIV.
For example, we all know the various mechanisms by which HIV is spread – anal sex, vaginal sex, IV needle sharing, blood transfusion – but not many know that HPV can be spread through skin to skin contact: no penetration necessary. For a virus that affects some 50% of sexually active adults and has serious consequences if left untreated and unmonitored, the time, energy, and resources spent on HIV awareness is and was inefficiently allocated. HPV awareness in the media and schools would have had more bang for the buck than the hullabaloo surrounding HIV. The fact is that, as a white heterosexual non drug-using male, I have very little risk of contracting HIV. I have a relatively high risk of contracting and transmitting HPV, chlamydia, and herpes though.
This is my long-winded way of saying that this lawsuit is bullshit. A dentist, Alan Evans, has been ordered to pay $1.5 million to Karly Rossiter for allegedly knowingly transmitting HPV to her; the decision handed down in an Iowa court was recently upheld. The pair had sex on January 1, 2005 after beginning dating sometime in December 2004. One “strong” piece of evidence against Evans was the fact that Evans asked Rossiter if she had been tested for HPV after they had sex.
In the particular case of Rossiter versus Evans, Rossiter claimed that she was HPV free before having sex with Evans. Even though she is also currently HPV-free – and $1.5 million richer – she sought and received damages for stress and strain due to a possibility that the virus would flare back up in the future. Assuming Rossiter, who was 23 at the time, had previously had sex with other people (she didn’t hold out on sex with Evans for long: they started dating in December 2004 and had sex on New Years, and the fact that Rossiter states that her previos test came back negative for HPV rather than saying that she was a virgin ***Update: she wasn’t a virgin), it’s entirely possible that Rossiter’s HPV had “gone away” before her previous exam and reappeared during the interim. There seems to be too many possibilities to prove that Evans knowingly infected Rossiter.
But in civil suits, “preponderance of doubt” is the only legal hurdle that needs to be cleared. This leaves men more susceptible to liability than women despite the same level of negligibility and carelessness. Rossiter’s lawyer, Jeff Tronvold, even pointed out during the trial that the date, means, and identity of infecting partner are difficult to definitively pin down when people are sexually active.
An MSNBC article quoted Tronvold as saying:
“If 75 percent of people are exposed to HPV, then everybody should know they had it at one point…[If you deny it to a partner,] “you have already met, in my opinion, the civil burden [of proof] because you just lied. You should say, ‘I have no signs, but I cannot tell you I never had it.’ This could change the way we all date.”
Scary stuff for any man. Regardless of the particular circumstances surrounding this case, such a decision and such legal wrangling leaves open the door for future litigation against men for knowledge that is often beyond their ability to have. The fact that most men carry the disease at some point but never know when they carry the disease or if their immune system has defeated it means they must make the assumption that there’s a reasonable possibility that they currently have the virus. To definitively deny having HPV is deceptive since a man can never know for sure that he doesn’t have the virus. But if Tronvold argues that men are culpable because they have cause to believe they are somewhat likely to have had the disease, doesn’t this imply that a woman should have reasonable cause to assume that the man she’s sleeping with has or has had HPV? Welcome to CYA 101.
This court decision caught my eye, took me aback, and made me throw up in my mouth a little. First off, men are usually only ever aware of having HPV after being told by a woman that she has the virus. HPV screens are only available during women’s cervical exams. The Center for Disease Control even seems to poo-poo HPV infection in men:
“Currently, there is no test designed or approved to find HPV in men. The only approved HPV test on the market is for women, for use as part of cervical cancer screening. There is no general test for men or women to check one’s overall “HPV status.” But HPV usually goes away on its own, without causing health problems. So an HPV infection that is found today will most likely not be there a year or two from now.”
Most men never develop health problems from HPV therefore there is no reason for them to screen for it. Well, unless we all get sued to death; that’s a health concern.
If Evans was liable, this means that many, many men have contracted the virus from a woman who knew she had the disease but didn’t tell him. Because men don’t directly suffer from HPV or show signs of infection (1% of cases lead to genital warts and most show no outward signs of infection) and none die as a result of the virus, men don’t have much of a litiginal claim against a woman who lies about her infection. But if he is informed of his infection, neverminding the fact that he could be completely misled into thinking that he carries the virus, he is liable to a woman he infects if she isn’t informed about it. The only recompense for men would be if a judge and jury bought the same distorted logic used by Tronvold to side with a man – this is doubtful to happen.
So there is a legal precedent implicating men for having sex with women without knowing for sure that they don’t have HPV. There are many other cases as well such as the recent filing of a $25 million lawsuit of a woman suing her husband for HPV contraction. The legal claim regarding HPV incurred such a high settlement because of the potential damage caused by this particular virus. But up until recently, and likely during the mid 2000s, people didn’t know much about HPV or the damage it could potentially cause. If a man like Evans were told that he had dipsodrymadica (I made that up) is he responsible for whatever damage that disease causes to a person he gives it to if a.) he knows nothing about it b.) the disease has little media exposure and c.) it is relatively less researched than other diseases? At what point must a person be fully aware of the consequences of their disease, at what point must they fully know the risks of it, and at what point are the responsible for sifting through mountains of information that may or may not be true? Purposeful HIV infection is pretty cut-and-dry: people don’t “get rid of” HIV, and the effects of it have been fully pounded into our skulls. There is another possibility about the extent to which a man knows he has HPV, which is relevant in Evans’ case. Genital warts indicate HPV, but lack of knowledge about HPV means that there is/was little chance that Evans knew a.) that he had a virus b.) the severity of the virus and c.) the nature of the virus and the risk of passing it on. An interesting fact about this particular case is that Rossiter testified that Evans had bumps on his penis yet she still had sex with him. If Evans had bumps and didn’t know what those bumps indicated because of ignorance is he to be held liable even though Rossiter isn’t held liable for the same ignorant display? It is also worth noting that Rossiter continued having sex with Evans for a year-and-a-half after learning she had HPV. Evans probably did, however, know that he should wear a condom during sex so as to prevent the transmission of HIV. Unfortunately in the case of HPV, condom use doesn’t prevent its spread. I didn’t know that until 2 years ago.
The point is, most men today don’t know that they can transmit HPV. Men around my age who grew up in the Nineties and early Naughts knew absolutely nothing about the disease then. Men older than us knew that much less. Hardly anyone knows that 50% of adults contract the virus at some point in their lives nor do they know the nature of the virus and what its symptoms are. They also don’t know that about 4,000 women die a year in the United States as a result of cervical cancer caused by the virus. As a comparison, 18,000 deaths occured in the United States due to AIDS in 2003. Of those 18,000, a high percentage were attributed to homosexual intercourse and IV drug use. To compare apples to apples, 4,000 women died from HPV due to relatively innocuous sexual behavior – which, I’d argue is in the ballpark of the number of women who died from AIDS contracted via similar behavior. The risks are similar, but the media attention, medical funding, and general knowledge of each disease incongruently favors HIV/AIDS relative to HPV and other diseases. This has harmed women and will also harm men if their knowledge of the diseases they potentially carry isn’t provided to them.
This is where my ire towards our educational upbringing and overblown media coverage of HIV comes in. A case like this leaves too much room for people – especially men – to be found liable for damages from a disease they know next to nothing about. They know next to nothing about it because nobody has told them about it because the “teachers” were too busy focusing on other diseases that – while dangerous and certainly a threat – weren’t the only disease on the block worth knowing about.
So lesson #1 learned from CYA 101: men now face the possibility of lawsuit for having sex with any woman without signing a legal waiver. Great – Game, foreplay, and romance are now futile.
