I’m not in quite agreement with both of your points. Yes of course HIV is transmissable only through blood, but I don’t agree with that being a good criteria for use of the term “sexually transmitted”, especially when other STD’s such as gonorrhea are actually effective—they are measurably hundreds of times more sexually transmissable than HIV. This is probably due to both evolved mechanisms that those STDs have (such as ulceration formation) and overall low virality and transmissability of HIV.
So it is ingenous I think to change the categorization. HIV is clearly at an extremum, and perhaps would be better classified as a weakly transmissable blood borne disease, not an STD.
The evolutionary relevance is important here. How did this evolve?
I’m not in quite agreement with both of your points. Yes of course HIV is transmissable only through blood, but I don’t agree with that being a good criteria for use of the term “sexually transmitted”, especially when other STD’s such as gonorrhea are actually effective—they are measurably hundreds of times more sexually transmissable than HIV. This is probably due to both evolved mechanisms that those STDs have (such as ulceration formation) and overall low virality and transmissability of HIV.
So it is ingenous I think to change the categorization. HIV is clearly at an extremum, and perhaps would be better classified as a weakly transmissable blood borne disease, not an STD.
The evolutionary relevance is important here. How did this evolve?