I’m watching TNG s4e26/s5e1 “Redemption”. There’s a scene where Worf’s honor is restored, by grabbing and bloodying Gowron’s d’k tahg. This got me thinking, Klingons absolutely adore blood rituals. Presumably, 24th century medicine makes contracting an STD a trivial issue. However, 21st century equivalent medicine would be far more limited.
It’s another example of survival bias … we only automatically count the survivors of any given situation but never think of the individuals that died in the process.
Klingons survived through that period of their history because so many others had to die needless, pointless, helpless deaths because of infections, diseases and suffering while a few went on to become stronger more resilient individuals.
It’s the same in human history … we got to the modern age with a much stronger immune system because so many millions had to die hundreds of years ago before we developed immunity.