Monday, February 5, 2007

HOW TO: Get Vaccinated Against Herpes (Maybe)


filed under: HOW TO:, Smart. Safe. Sex. by Lux Nightmare | Leave a Comment

I found out about the herpes vaccine during the summer of 2004. A friend – a medical school student – posted about it in her blog, and since I was a sex nerd and seemed to fit the requirements, I called up Mt. Sinai and scheduled an appointment to be screened for the study.

The requirements, at the time that I enrolled in the study, were relatively simple. I had to:

1) Be female
2) Be herpes free (both oral and genital)
3) Not have been vaccinated against hepatitis A (as the vaccine would be used on the control group)

There was also some stuff about not getting pregnant and staying in New York for the next twenty months: trivial stuff, the kind of stuff I knew wouldn’t be a problem.

So I went to Mt. Sinai, to the OB/GYN department. I walked past security, took the elevator to the second floor, and walked through the waiting room, back into the small office decorated with posters advertising the study. The posters featured women of a variety of ages and races, coupled with statistics about the virus, about how you could make a difference by enrolling in this study.

25% of American women have genital herpes.

60% of American women have oral herpes.

If I qualified for the study, I would be in the minority of American women. If I enrolled in the study, I could make a difference in the lives of future generations.

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