Until the 1980s, social science research on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) focused primarily on the history of various pestilences, the epidemiology of those diseases, and the description of mass disasters (Brandt 1985; Aral and Holmes 1999). The disease that was most commonly researched was syphillis, long the best identified and most feared STD. Historians and anthropologists wrote numerous treatises on its origin and the social consequences of its introduction into isolated, tribal, or third world societies (Wood 1978; Hart 1978). In the early 1980s, the consequences of other STDs were studied, especially as sequelae of prostitution (Kalm 1985; Poherat et al. 1981).

When awareness of the "sexual revolution" finally induced social scientists and epidemiologists to think about the effects of STDs on less sexually active populations than prostitutes and their clients, the literature turned to the newly sexually active: vulnerable teenagers (Washington et al. 1985) and other young people who engaged...