6 ms·

This is huge! Imagine affordable STD test kits adjacent to the pregnancy testers on the shelves of your local store. The prostitution story looks a lot differ

This is huge! Imagine affordable STD test kits adjacent to the pregnancy testers on the shelves of your local store. The prostitution story looks a lot different if every encounter can realistically incorporate a predicated broad-spectrum STD test of both parties. Edit: Usual dating would be a lot less risky as well. Has it become standard practice for couples to both get tested before becoming intimate yet?

serf 9y ago
>The prostitution story looks a lot different if every encounter can realistically incorporate a predicated broad-spectrum STD test of both parties. Disease spread is such a drop-in-the-bucket among the (moral, ethical, personal, societal) issues surrounding prostitution that I have a hard time understanding how this news changes the story. It's great news; but prostitution is an issue that deserves a lot of time and discussion -- and likely the solutions will be social, not technological.
- Jemmeh 9y ago
  I appreciate your point, but just think of the social changes that came about from birth control and the ability to control when you start a family. This breakthrough might not fix everything but it would be a boon for sexual freedom.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  How is it deserving of time and discussion? It's universally horrible. >75% of prostitutes are illegal immigrant victims of human trafficking while the remaining use it as a means of supporting their drug habits and abhorrent lifestyles. Even with legalization of drugs and prostitution, there will still be those that live on the fringes of society and lack basic access to social support structures, and with legalization then it only increases the size of the fringe due to the debilitating physical and psychological effects of drug use and promiscuity. There's a reason it's illegal and not because of racism, sexism, or other nonsensical scapegoats.
  - defertoreptar 9y ago
    If they sold used cars to support their "abhorrent lifestyle," would that then make used cars sales as horrible as prostitution?
  - msla 9y ago
    This is equivalent to saying we must never legalize alcohol because it will increase the number of people blind from wood alcohol poisoning and increase the amount of money flowing to people like Capone and Nitti. Also, this: > with legalization then it only increases the size of the fringe due to the debilitating physical and psychological effects of drug use and promiscuity. ... is not so much unproven as disproven.
  - satori99 9y ago
    > There's a reason it's illegal It's not illegal where I live, and hasn't been for a very long time. Sex workers pay income tax, and can call the police if they have any trouble with clients. It is just another service industry.
  - newnewpdro 9y ago
    There is no way the majority of the people exchanging sex for money are being accounted for in any reliable fashion. Prostitution is going on all over the place at all times. It's ubiquitous and unless you're participating it's largely kept out of view, being illegal. Your >75% figure seems obviously bogus to me.
  - jjcm 9y ago
    At least here in NSW Australia, it's a legal and licensed industry. I'm friends with several women who work in the industry, some of which have worked overseas in other brothels. One of the interesting things I've found is how well the regulations, according to them, have worked here in Australia. Due to the protections in place, all of them feel safe in the industry and that it's entirely optional and their own decision. I'm sure this isn't universal, but at least after gleaning this information from them I feel like prostitution can be done right if it's regulated correctly. To ease any thoughts of bias, I've never solicited any of their services - this was told to me strictly as a friend, so there was no need to sugar coat things.
- hueving 9y ago
  I think you're underestimating how many men avoid prostitution purely due to fear of contracting disease. Prostitution is legal in Nevada (outside of Reno/Vegas) and the prostitutes operate without pimps. There are far fewer ethical concerns in some places than you imply.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Given that heterosexual dates are typically paid for by men and husbands typically make a lot more than their wives, it could be argued that the overwhelming majority of heterosexual sex is some form of prostitution. Yet when I criticize dating on that basis, I get called a nutter. When men and women have some kind of parity where women are not routinely considering their bottom line when deciding how much crap to take in an unhappy relationship, then you can talk to me about the immorality of prostitution. Until then, wow, what a way to put on blinders as to how the vast majority of relationships work.
  - Semkas 9y ago
    The con of prostitution isnt just moral prudishnes, but als the safety of women when they sell themselves to strangers instead of their husband. This is mindnumbingly obvious.
  - luma 9y ago
    Please keep this redpill garbage off of HN. There's no place for it here.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    That's an absurd comparison. Most women have sex with their husbands willingly because they like sex and they like their husband. Prostitution is a quid pro quo business arrangement. Of course, sugar-daddy type relationships do exist, but they are not the norm. Consider the example of your own parents. Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs?
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs? This is a dirty tactic. It is not good faith engagement. I'm a woman who has a strict no dating policy, by which I mean that I don't establish romantic relationships based on some man spending money on me. I am entirely satisfied with the positive impact that policy has had on my life. From what I have read and heard over the years, no, most women don't have sex with their husband because they like him. There are relationships like that, certainly. But the financial factor pretty clearly poisons quite a lot of relationships. I often think this should be the foundational argument as to why men should be more invested in helping make gender parity happen. If you are a well paid man and tired of feeling like women only date you for your money, fostering a world in which women have money of their own on pat with men is the single best antidote to your dating problem. As just one supporting citation, this article talks about the fact that pro athletes frequently marry their high school sweetheart because you can't trust that women who met you after you struck it rich really like you. They may just be there for the money. (The article does not use those exact words, but that is the gist of it.) https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-athletes-go-broke https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-at... There are also rap song lyrics about how poor men from the hood can't get a date, but once they strike it rich "it's a puss buffet." I have read articles where, for example, a guy lost his job and his wife quit having sex with him. He stated that he learned his paycheck was the most attractive thing about him. A friend of a friend lost his well paid job and his wife left him because "it wasn't any fun anymore." The term gold digging whore is a gendered term. It exists because men typically make a lot more than women and a lot of women are primarily interested in finding someone to pay their bills. This is compounded by the difficulties women face in pursuing serious careers of their own. While I was homeless, no one wanted to open doors for me career wise. But lots of men wanted to offer me money or a place to stay if I would sleep with them. In my experience, this problem runs shockingly deep. If your romantic relationships are unaffected by it, count yourself lucky.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  Disease spread is such a drop-in-the-bucket among the (moral, ethical, personal, societal) issues surrounding prostitution That is simply a matter of perspective and implementation. There are many countries and areas where prostitution is legalised (an sometimes even unionised), and evidence shows that on the whole, the majority of problems associated with prostitution are caused by prohibition.
thrillgore 9y ago
Now imagine the MPEG-LA making money off these tests and driving up the costs of anything using CRISPR. No, i'm not bullshitting you. http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/CRISPR/default.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/CRISPR/default.aspx
- adventured 9y ago
  MPEG LA has very limited market patent positioning in the US. The Broad Institute is sitting on radically superior IP, including the US patent on CRISPR Cas9 and global control of CRISPR Cpf1, which MPEG LA does not have any access to or control over. MPEG LA also doesn't have any rights to Sherlock. Nearly all global rights to all forms of CRISPR are controlled by Berkeley, Vienna and the Broad Institute (with some smaller IP held by a few universities, and some corporations like Editas, Intellia, CRISPR Therapeutics, etc). MPEG LA has essentailly zero power over CRISPR, they own zero patents on CRISPR, they're trying to skim money by being a deal connector of the Berkeley & Vienna patents.
  - kanzure 9y ago
    I think the biologists need to take a long, hard look at how MPEG-LA has acted and conducted itself in the past. Even if you blame its participants for their collective behavior, it's still pretty damning of this operation and currency of thinking. Keep CRISPR-Cas9 out of MPEG-LA. Y'all have been warned. Form a pool using defensive patent licenses, do whatever it takes if you really want to reduce "transaction costs", but do it without that community.
    - adventured 9y ago
      No question, both the commercial potential of CRISPR and the humanitarian potential will be served by keeping MPEG LA on the outside. So far that appears to be the case, their dream of acting as the centralized CRISPR patent authority hasn't gotten traction.
      - kanzure 9y ago
Alex3917 9y ago
So the problem is that there are hundreds or thousands of different types of viral and bacterial infections you can get, many of which probably haven't even been discovered yet, but STD testing only covers the four or five most common things. Even if you can theoretically detect a lot more stuff with CRISPR, it's going to be decades until the technology is anywhere approaching comprehensive.
- derefr 9y ago
  It seems to me that treatment for STDs, and knowing whether someone "might have an STD", are very different problems, that happen to be currently solved by the same solutions. If you could build a whitelist of known benign strains of bacteria and viruses, and then create a device that tests your urine and dings whenever it detects things that are (positive match) bacterial antibodies or viral capsids, but that aren't (negative match) in its whitelist, that seems like it'd do a lot to help people.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  Sure, but even just being able to quickly answer "HIV or HPV?" has tremendous value. Everything else is perfectly treatable, no?
  - book_mentioned 9y ago
    More interesting to me if this could detect HIV within the first 30 days of infection. I'm no expert but IIRC that's not possible with any test right now.
    - evolve2017 9y ago
      Not quite true - we're down to around 14 days with the latest generation of tests. The ideal would be a rapid 'fever' panel that tests for all the viruses we currently pay a ton of money for. This sort of test could pick up early-stage HIV which, if symptomatic, don't feel much different from a cold/flu. [1] - https://www.aafp.org/afp/2014/0215/afp20140215p265-f1.gif https://www.aafp.org/afp/2014/0215/afp20140215p265-f1.gif
Avshalom 9y ago
STD tests are already free all over the place.
- castis 9y ago
  Just because they have no cost to the end user doesn't mean no one is paying for them. There is a cost associated with producing and distributing those tests.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  The issue is not just economic, it's spatial and temporal as well. This can provide STD test kits that fit in a pocket, deliver results on-site within minutes, and cost something comparable to an at-home pregnancy test or less. This topic reminds of an excellent and relevant Mitch Hedberg skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8pvD0TaO3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8pvD0TaO3Y
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    And are probably easier to get your hands on in a less embarrassing way than going to an STD clinic.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dogma1138 9y ago
As long as it has the same enforcement of mandatory reporting STD checks have currently.
kusmi 9y ago
Not really, it's pretty unorthodox to look for genetic sequences as evidence of infection. Typically you look for antibodies, as the virus may not be circulating, or is simply not where you are sampling.

serf 9y ago

>The prostitution story looks a lot different if every encounter can realistically incorporate a predicated broad-spectrum STD test of both parties. Disease spread is such a drop-in-the-bucket among the (moral, ethical, personal, societal) issues surrounding prostitution that I have a hard time understanding how this news changes the story. It's great news; but prostitution is an issue that deserves a lot of time and discussion -- and likely the solutions will be social, not technological.

Jemmeh 9y ago
I appreciate your point, but just think of the social changes that came about from birth control and the ability to control when you start a family. This breakthrough might not fix everything but it would be a boon for sexual freedom.
ihsw2 9y ago
How is it deserving of time and discussion? It's universally horrible. >75% of prostitutes are illegal immigrant victims of human trafficking while the remaining use it as a means of supporting their drug habits and abhorrent lifestyles. Even with legalization of drugs and prostitution, there will still be those that live on the fringes of society and lack basic access to social support structures, and with legalization then it only increases the size of the fringe due to the debilitating physical and psychological effects of drug use and promiscuity. There's a reason it's illegal and not because of racism, sexism, or other nonsensical scapegoats.
- defertoreptar 9y ago
  If they sold used cars to support their "abhorrent lifestyle," would that then make used cars sales as horrible as prostitution?
- msla 9y ago
  This is equivalent to saying we must never legalize alcohol because it will increase the number of people blind from wood alcohol poisoning and increase the amount of money flowing to people like Capone and Nitti. Also, this: > with legalization then it only increases the size of the fringe due to the debilitating physical and psychological effects of drug use and promiscuity. ... is not so much unproven as disproven.
- satori99 9y ago
  > There's a reason it's illegal It's not illegal where I live, and hasn't been for a very long time. Sex workers pay income tax, and can call the police if they have any trouble with clients. It is just another service industry.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  There is no way the majority of the people exchanging sex for money are being accounted for in any reliable fashion. Prostitution is going on all over the place at all times. It's ubiquitous and unless you're participating it's largely kept out of view, being illegal. Your >75% figure seems obviously bogus to me.
- jjcm 9y ago
  At least here in NSW Australia, it's a legal and licensed industry. I'm friends with several women who work in the industry, some of which have worked overseas in other brothels. One of the interesting things I've found is how well the regulations, according to them, have worked here in Australia. Due to the protections in place, all of them feel safe in the industry and that it's entirely optional and their own decision. I'm sure this isn't universal, but at least after gleaning this information from them I feel like prostitution can be done right if it's regulated correctly. To ease any thoughts of bias, I've never solicited any of their services - this was told to me strictly as a friend, so there was no need to sugar coat things.
hueving 9y ago
I think you're underestimating how many men avoid prostitution purely due to fear of contracting disease. Prostitution is legal in Nevada (outside of Reno/Vegas) and the prostitutes operate without pimps. There are far fewer ethical concerns in some places than you imply.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Given that heterosexual dates are typically paid for by men and husbands typically make a lot more than their wives, it could be argued that the overwhelming majority of heterosexual sex is some form of prostitution. Yet when I criticize dating on that basis, I get called a nutter. When men and women have some kind of parity where women are not routinely considering their bottom line when deciding how much crap to take in an unhappy relationship, then you can talk to me about the immorality of prostitution. Until then, wow, what a way to put on blinders as to how the vast majority of relationships work.
- Semkas 9y ago
  The con of prostitution isnt just moral prudishnes, but als the safety of women when they sell themselves to strangers instead of their husband. This is mindnumbingly obvious.
- luma 9y ago
  Please keep this redpill garbage off of HN. There's no place for it here.
- root_axis 9y ago
  That's an absurd comparison. Most women have sex with their husbands willingly because they like sex and they like their husband. Prostitution is a quid pro quo business arrangement. Of course, sugar-daddy type relationships do exist, but they are not the norm. Consider the example of your own parents. Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Is your mother akin to a prostitute because she had sex with your dad at the same time that he may have been providing for her material needs? This is a dirty tactic. It is not good faith engagement. I'm a woman who has a strict no dating policy, by which I mean that I don't establish romantic relationships based on some man spending money on me. I am entirely satisfied with the positive impact that policy has had on my life. From what I have read and heard over the years, no, most women don't have sex with their husband because they like him. There are relationships like that, certainly. But the financial factor pretty clearly poisons quite a lot of relationships. I often think this should be the foundational argument as to why men should be more invested in helping make gender parity happen. If you are a well paid man and tired of feeling like women only date you for your money, fostering a world in which women have money of their own on pat with men is the single best antidote to your dating problem. As just one supporting citation, this article talks about the fact that pro athletes frequently marry their high school sweetheart because you can't trust that women who met you after you struck it rich really like you. They may just be there for the money. (The article does not use those exact words, but that is the gist of it.) https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-athletes-go-broke https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-at... There are also rap song lyrics about how poor men from the hood can't get a date, but once they strike it rich "it's a puss buffet." I have read articles where, for example, a guy lost his job and his wife quit having sex with him. He stated that he learned his paycheck was the most attractive thing about him. A friend of a friend lost his well paid job and his wife left him because "it wasn't any fun anymore." The term gold digging whore is a gendered term. It exists because men typically make a lot more than women and a lot of women are primarily interested in finding someone to pay their bills. This is compounded by the difficulties women face in pursuing serious careers of their own. While I was homeless, no one wanted to open doors for me career wise. But lots of men wanted to offer me money or a place to stay if I would sleep with them. In my experience, this problem runs shockingly deep. If your romantic relationships are unaffected by it, count yourself lucky.
mdekkers 9y ago
Disease spread is such a drop-in-the-bucket among the (moral, ethical, personal, societal) issues surrounding prostitution That is simply a matter of perspective and implementation. There are many countries and areas where prostitution is legalised (an sometimes even unionised), and evidence shows that on the whole, the majority of problems associated with prostitution are caused by prohibition.

thrillgore 9y ago

Now imagine the MPEG-LA making money off these tests and driving up the costs of anything using CRISPR. No, i'm not bullshitting you. http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/CRISPR/default.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/CRISPR/default.aspx

adventured 9y ago
MPEG LA has very limited market patent positioning in the US. The Broad Institute is sitting on radically superior IP, including the US patent on CRISPR Cas9 and global control of CRISPR Cpf1, which MPEG LA does not have any access to or control over. MPEG LA also doesn't have any rights to Sherlock. Nearly all global rights to all forms of CRISPR are controlled by Berkeley, Vienna and the Broad Institute (with some smaller IP held by a few universities, and some corporations like Editas, Intellia, CRISPR Therapeutics, etc). MPEG LA has essentailly zero power over CRISPR, they own zero patents on CRISPR, they're trying to skim money by being a deal connector of the Berkeley & Vienna patents.
- kanzure 9y ago
  I think the biologists need to take a long, hard look at how MPEG-LA has acted and conducted itself in the past. Even if you blame its participants for their collective behavior, it's still pretty damning of this operation and currency of thinking. Keep CRISPR-Cas9 out of MPEG-LA. Y'all have been warned. Form a pool using defensive patent licenses, do whatever it takes if you really want to reduce "transaction costs", but do it without that community.
  - adventured 9y ago
    No question, both the commercial potential of CRISPR and the humanitarian potential will be served by keeping MPEG LA on the outside. So far that appears to be the case, their dream of acting as the centralized CRISPR patent authority hasn't gotten traction.
    - kanzure 9y ago

Alex3917 9y ago

So the problem is that there are hundreds or thousands of different types of viral and bacterial infections you can get, many of which probably haven't even been discovered yet, but STD testing only covers the four or five most common things. Even if you can theoretically detect a lot more stuff with CRISPR, it's going to be decades until the technology is anywhere approaching comprehensive.

derefr 9y ago
It seems to me that treatment for STDs, and knowing whether someone "might have an STD", are very different problems, that happen to be currently solved by the same solutions. If you could build a whitelist of known benign strains of bacteria and viruses, and then create a device that tests your urine and dings whenever it detects things that are (positive match) bacterial antibodies or viral capsids, but that aren't (negative match) in its whitelist, that seems like it'd do a lot to help people.
newnewpdro 9y ago
Sure, but even just being able to quickly answer "HIV or HPV?" has tremendous value. Everything else is perfectly treatable, no?
- book_mentioned 9y ago
  More interesting to me if this could detect HIV within the first 30 days of infection. I'm no expert but IIRC that's not possible with any test right now.
  - evolve2017 9y ago
    Not quite true - we're down to around 14 days with the latest generation of tests. The ideal would be a rapid 'fever' panel that tests for all the viruses we currently pay a ton of money for. This sort of test could pick up early-stage HIV which, if symptomatic, don't feel much different from a cold/flu. [1] - https://www.aafp.org/afp/2014/0215/afp20140215p265-f1.gif https://www.aafp.org/afp/2014/0215/afp20140215p265-f1.gif

Avshalom 9y ago

STD tests are already free all over the place.

castis 9y ago
Just because they have no cost to the end user doesn't mean no one is paying for them. There is a cost associated with producing and distributing those tests.
newnewpdro 9y ago
The issue is not just economic, it's spatial and temporal as well. This can provide STD test kits that fit in a pocket, deliver results on-site within minutes, and cost something comparable to an at-home pregnancy test or less. This topic reminds of an excellent and relevant Mitch Hedberg skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8pvD0TaO3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8pvD0TaO3Y
- alphaalpha101 9y ago
  And are probably easier to get your hands on in a less embarrassing way than going to an STD clinic.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dogma1138 9y ago

As long as it has the same enforcement of mandatory reporting STD checks have currently.

kusmi 9y ago

Not really, it's pretty unorthodox to look for genetic sequences as evidence of infection. Typically you look for antibodies, as the virus may not be circulating, or is simply not where you are sampling.