Why has evolution not integrated some internal defence mechanism to prevent ever sexually transmitting a disease...

Why has evolution not integrated some internal defence mechanism to prevent ever sexually transmitting a disease, rather than have humanity apply their wits and having to take the initiative every individual time to use condom or whatever?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Greece
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Evolution is working in both directions. Animals have developed immune systems to reduce infection, but viruses and bacteria develop countermeasures. It's like asking why rabbits haven't integrated some defense mechanism to stop them from ever being eaten.

It has. It's just not 100% effective. Evolution operates on a standard of "good enough", as perfection is too costly.

Yeah ok, you mean that f.e. syfilis wasn't around previous century?

Either syphilis didn't exist in Europe before Columbus brought it back or it wasn't recognized as such.

Why limit your question to sexually transmitted diseases? Why aren't we immune to ALL germs and viruses? Because evolution is a never-ending arms race. The enemy (almost) always has a new tactic.
We've scored some major victories with antibiotics and vaccines, but completely annihilating the other side has been achieved in only a very few instances -- like smallpox.

As far as I know, up until the industrial era humans have been very devoted to their first partner.
It follows that the risk of STDs and the consequent evolutionary pressure were small.

What ever can that possibly mean? Too costly

> Why limit your question to sexually transmitted diseases?

Because all in all sex is the most imperative initiative to assure the survival of a collective species

Where have you been?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Greece

Not user who posted but "too costly" in evolutionary terms means that a body can only devote so much of available resources. Like any engineering project, there are trade-offs. There is rarely a "best solution" to a problem. A navy ship can have thick armor and huge guns and be fast enough to beat most foes and run from the ones that are too strong --- but not all at the same time.

You can kill your partner just as dead by sneezing influenza on them. Diseases are opportunistic. Sex is just one means of being transmitted. You die if you can't eat and food-borne illnesses take advantage of that!

# this isn't an answer

It has, it's called the immune system. Sex is a very important and conserved area in human evolution, so it's easy for something to take advantage of that system which is why there are so many different sti's. Another big element here is the damage being caused, you'll see that a lot of these diseases specifically don't have symptoms for men and that's an adaptation that makes transmission easier. It's an evolutionary arms race that probably won't be won anytime soon, like with parasites. There's not many downsides to having most modern sti's in terms of producing offspring initially after getting infection so there's not a lot of selection working against the genes of those who would spread them. So not only is it something that's easy to get but there's not a lot of drive in terms of evolution to get rid of them.

Being alive also contributes to the survival of the species. Can't really be alive if you die of sickness, so your question reduces to "how come aren't we immune to all diseases?".

Isn't there a moment where the problems would be best tacked at their root?
Like aftrr..so many years we live until 90 years old and now it's best to start focussing on preventing std-s biologically, to reduce the most important biological imperative to being the least potentially harmful it can be.

Maybe we're already being prompted for it with results that aren't deducable unil generations later

sorry if i went all /x on you there

> there's not a lot of selection working against the genes of those who would spread them

Do we understand what specifically would be something that is actually defying that. Is it death? Like is there a scenario where your body goes like 'welp, you're too much a threat now for humanity, best be if you're gonna be done living' and you'll fucking die.
i actually know you don't know the answer for sure to that. This may be happening around us all the time, so fucked up.

Wonder who was recruited for translating pikachu

Many STDs do not rapidly kill the host. Selection would only take place if the animal dies or is compromised before reaching mating age.
The fact that they are sexually transmitted means they will spread in the creatures that have already reached mating age. In some sense, there is a selection pressure on the disease to not kill the host until it mates.
If the disease can transfer from mother to child and also kill the child before it reaches mating age, you would see a selection pressure on the animal.

It was the secret language developed by the creators of that interesting Japanese animation full of multi-dimensional characters and deep and complex storylines.

Uhm whta? Are you joking?

>humans can evolve but viruses can't that'd be cheating!

>As far as I know
Clearly, you know nothing about this.