Why would you say these numbers are so high ?

Parents are not properly educating and monitoring their children. Also, abstinence-only programs are ineffective and simply promote this problem. Kids think STDs will never happen to them and, since they don’t think they are at risk, they don’t bother to carry condoms or use them.

There are three main reasons I can think of… #1 - The old “It wont happen to me’ #2 - People not knowing their partner enough #3 - Not using the proper protection (even though using protection doesn’t 100% prevent STD’s, it helps a lot)

More bad news just today: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. syphilis rate rose for the seventh straight year in 2007, driven by a continued surge in cases among homosexual and bisexual men, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. Since 2000, when the national syphilis rate sank to a low of 2.1 per 100,000 people after a decade of progress in the 1990s, the rate has soared by 76 percent, the CDC reported. Homosexual and bisexual men accounted for 64 percent of syphilis cases in 2007, up from about 5 percent in 1999. CDC officials expressed concern not only because the recent increases in this bacterial sexually transmitted disease follows years of declines, but also because syphilis can elevate a person’s risk of being infected with the AIDS virus and the odds of giving it to someone else. They also called rises among women and blacks troubling.