Deaths from sexually transmitted disease.

Eugene Volokh points to this (information re-ordered):

An interesting article, S.H. Ebrahim, M.T. McKenna & J.S. Marks, Sexual Behaviour: Related Adverse Health Burden in the United States, Sexually Transmitted Infections, vol. 81, pp. 38-40 (2005), reports that sexually transmitted diseases were responsible for nearly 30,000 deaths in the U.S. in 1998.

A third of the deaths were among women, and two thirds among men.

Three quarters of the deaths were from HIV, but nearly 5000 were from cervical cancer, which seems to be generally caused by some strains of human papilloma virus, and nearly 2000 were caused by sexually transmitted hepatitis and hepatitis-caused liver cancer. (The study purported to take into account the fact that not all hepatitis is sexually transmitted.)

There were also over 100 deaths from syphilis and fewer than 10 from gonorrhoea (presumably from the very rare gonorrhoea-caused heart disease), but apparently modern antibiotics have done a great deal to limit death and serious illness caused in the U.S. by bacterial sexually transmitted diseases.

…By way of comparison, there were about 44,000 car accidents, a titch over 30,000 suicides, a little under 18,000 homicides, and a bit over 30,000 total firearms deaths (including suicides, homicides, and the few accidents). …

The study also reported that sexually transmitted disease causes some 600,000 cases of infertility per year (overwhelmingly among women); and of course hepatitis, cervical cancer, liver cancer, and HIV can be quite painful and disabling even when they don’t cause death.

The comments are… interesting.   A lot of people get very defensive about this news and seem to care about it only insofar as it fits in with their beliefs about education policy.

A side note:  I do not believe it reflects on Eugene personally, and the VC is one of my favorite blogs, but Ann Althouse attracts, generally, much smarter and wittier commenters.