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San Francisco health officials reported an alarming increase in new syphilis cases last year after years of declines. New syphilis cases rose 55.8 percent in 2008 over the previous year, San Francisco public health officials reported. The increase was significantly lower than the dramatic spikes reported early in the decade, when new infections increased 167 percent from 2001 to 2002. But last year's rise would seem to indicate an increase in unsafe sexual practices, which could lead to a rise in HIV infection rates.

Washington, D.C., had the dubious distinction of beating all 50 states to post the highest rates in the nation for the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The District of Columbia had a Chlamydia rate of 1,177 cases per 100,000 people--almost three times the rate of its neighbors, Virginia (405) and Maryland (439). Mississippi was a distant second, at 728 cases per 100,000 people. By comparison, California’s rate was 407 cases per 100,000; New York came in at 458; New Mexico...

American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday. Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States. "Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated," said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world," Douglas added in a...

Helen Rappaport, an acclaimed historian and author, said that books, papers and journals charting Lenin’s last years show that he contracted the sexually transmitted disease and that it ultimately claimed his life. She said Lenin showed many symptoms of syphilis and that many among the Soviet hierarchy believed he had it. But they were banned from speaking in public and threatened with death because of the embarrassment it would cause. Instead, official documents show that his death was attributed to declining health following three stokes and an assassination attempt in 1918. Central to Miss Rappaport’s case was a report written...

Historians have long agreed that Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin suffered a series of three strokes that eventually led to his death. But new evidence has been uncovered that appears to show Lenin actually succumbed to the sexually transmitted disease, syphilis. The Soviets made huge attempts to cover up the real reasons for Lenin's erratic behaviour and sudden bouts of rage in the years leading up to his death in 1924...

Chlamydia infections now top 1.1 million, more than ever recorded. Syphilis cases are up for the 7th year in a row. And gonorrhea is not declining as hoped. Rates of the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia are climbing in the U.S., and rates of syphilis -- once on the verge of elimination -- rose for the seventh consecutive year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday in its annual report on STDs. Gonorrhea rates did not increase, but they ceased falling a few years ago, frustrating goals set by public health leaders. Chlamydia infections in the United States now...

Sexually transmitted disease rates soar: CDC WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. syphilis rates rose for a seventh year in 2007, driven by gay and bisexual men, while chlamydia reached record numbers and gonorrhea remained at alarming levels -- especially among blacks, health officials said on Tuesday. Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for about 70 percent of gonorrhea cases and almost half of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, and gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were...

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by Borgna BrunnerFor forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for "bad blood," their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately...

“Based on this Tuskegee experiment ... I believe our government is capable of doing anything.” So said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright when asked if he stood by his claim that “the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” The infamous Tuskegee experiment is the Medusa’s head of black left-wing paranoia. Whenever someone laments the fact that anywhere from 10 percent to 33 percent of African-Americans believe the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill blacks, someone will say, “That’s not so crazy when you consider what happened at Tuskegee.” But it is...

Many cases of sexually transmitted diseases are escaping detection because gay men are not being tested each year as advised, federal health officials said Wednesday. And if the men do show up, the officials added, many doctors and clinics are not following screening recommendations. But more cases could be detected if the government approved new ways to use a type of DNA test that is already on the market, the officials and researchers said in a news conference at a scientific meeting in Chicago. They said the test, used in new ways, could detect twice as many cases of gonorrhea...

LITTLE ROCK -- The people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands are among the unhealthiest people in the world. An estimated 6,000-8,000 Marshallese immigrants live in Springdale, AR. and the surrounding areas, of whom 867 are children enrolled in the Springdale School District, Pritchard told the House and Senate Interim Committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor.Deputy State Health Officer Dr. Joe Bates testified that between 2000 and 2005, Northwest Arkansas had nine cases of congenital syphilis, six of which involved Marshallese; 38 people with infectious syphilis, 21 of whom were Marshallese; and nine cases of leprosy, all Marshallese....

New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread By Julie Steenhuysen 13 minutes ago New genetic evidence supports the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from the New World, U.S. researchers said on Monday, reviving a centuries-old debate about the origins of the disease. They said a genetic analysis of the syphilis family tree reveals that its closest relative was a South American cousin that causes yaws, an infection caused by a sub-species of the same bacteria. "Some people think it is a really ancient disease that our earliest human ancestors would have had. Other people think it came...

snip... Syphilis, it seems, developed in the New World from yaws, perhaps 1,600 years ago, and was waiting for Columbus and his crew. The Rothschilds are now examining skeletal collections from the Bahamas to look for evidence of syphilis nearer to Columbus' landfall.

Health officials in New York City say new statistics show an increase in syphilis infections among men and women. However, this is a small-scale example of a problem that is happening nationwide, they say. Unsafe-sex practices are being blamed for bringing the disease's old health dangers back to life after a drop in the 1990s. The New York Times reports that 260 cases of syphilis were recorded by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the first quarter of this year, including ten cases of female infection. That is more than twice the number for the same period...

Online Video: Noted Endocrinologist Dispels the Myth of Health Benefits of the Pill - Part 2 By Elizabeth O'BrienOTTAWA, August 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The lecture of noted endocrinologist Dr. Maria Kraw, speaking at the Humanae Vitae Conference "A New Beginning" last year, described the serious medical risks involved in taking hormonal birth control. It also debunked the common myths of the so-called "health benefits" of the pill. She began by noting that one of the major risks of taking hormonal contraceptives is an increased risk of cancer. Looking at 54 studies of the pill, she observed that researchers found...

On many nights, in the back rooms of bars, community centers and church meeting halls around the city, George Perez sits around a platter of cold cuts with perhaps a dozen other men to talk about sex. While the conversation is often explicit — even lascivious — these gatherings are deadly serious. Some 25 years after the AIDS epidemic began, Perez, an 18-year veteran counselor with the Metropolitan Health District, tries to help the other men at the table understand why they're risking their own health — and the health of others — through unsafe sex practices. "If my need...

A study to be published in the upcoming June edition of the American Journal of Public Health has researchers alarmed about growing rates of syphilis among homosexual and bisexual men. The overall number of syphilis cases in the United States fell from 50,578 in 1990 to 7,177 in 2003. Nevertheless, homosexual men have seen their rates rise significantly in this decade. "The entire nation was caught unawares," said study lead author James Heffelfinger, M.D., a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study provides further evidence of the dangers involved with the homosexual lifestyle. LifeSiteNews.com reported...

A new report published in a leading medical journal suggests China is seeing alarming and rising rates of the sexually transmitted disease, syphilis. The Lancet reports that China - which virtually eliminated syphilis in the 1960s and 70s - is now seeing the disease return with alarming intensity. It reveals that reported rates have risen from 0.2 cases per 100,000 in 1993 to 5.7 cases per 100,000 in 2005. Dramatic intervention is now needed, one of the report's authors says. The study involved doctors from China's National Centre for STD Control in Nanjing and from the University of North Carolina's...

Peace mom Cindy Sheehan spent the night in a hospital for a gynecological procedure and treatment of dehydration but said Saturday that wouldn't stop her protest against the Iraq war on land she bought near President Bush's Crawford ranch. Sheehan was listed in stable condition at Providence Health Center in Waco, about 20 miles east of Crawford. She said she could be released later in the day but probably would miss an afternoon barbecue at Camp Casey, the protesters' campsite named for her soldier son who was killed in Iraq in 2004. "Everything will still go on," Sheehan, 49, told...

Anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan was undergoing a minor gynecological procedure Friday evening in a hospital where she was also being treated for dehydration and exhaustion, friends and relatives said. Sheehan was listed in stable condition at Providence Health Center in Waco. Brenda Mauk, a nursing supervisor, declined to release additional information. Sheehan was taken to the Waco hospital after friends picked her up Friday afternoon at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where she arrived after spending several days in Seattle at the Veterans for Peace Convention, said Tiffany Burns, Sheehan's friend. Sheehan, who has been on a liquid diet as...

Syphilis rates in blacks, women and babies declined significantly between 1999 and 2004 but continued to rise overall, driven by a dramatic jump in infections among gay and bisexual men, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. About 64% of all the new syphilis cases in 2004 were in men who had engaged in homosexual activity, according to the CDC. That group made up 5% of the syphilis cases in 1999. "Increases in gay and bisexual men are overshadowing the decreases," Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, Sexually Transmitted Disease and Tuberculosis Prevention,...

(snip) From Mexico's perspective, the border encompasses some of the country's most economically prosperous states. In contrast, the U.S. border region is among the poorest areas in the United States, with >30% of families living at or below the poverty level[8]. Along the Texas border, an estimated 350,000 or more people live in 1,450 unincorporated areas known as colonias, which lack adequate sanitation infrastructure[8]. The large population movement, limited public health infrastructure, and poor environmental conditions contribute to increased incidence of certain infectious diseases[8-11] Analysis of data from the U.S. National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System for 1990 through 1998 showed...

Fellow Americans, there comes a time every mans life when we must give up ourselves before we are worthy to recieve. There comes a time in this war on terror when in order to protect liberty, we have to give it up in the mean time for safty. That's right folks. Today, Americans have forsaken the creator for the creation and have decided that they would value our "civil liberties" than protecting western civilization and rich white people from the tender mercies of radical Islamic terrorists. Selfish liberals insist and whine that Bush has no right to spy on Americans...

TORONTO, February 14, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Homosexual activists have long sought to distance themselves from pedophiles, however Canada's most prominent homosexual activist group has now demanded the lowering the age of consent for anal sex to 16 from 18.  Surprisingly, Canada's National Post, regarded by some as a 'conservative' paper has come out in favour of the proposal.Reacting to the Conservative Government's plan to raise the age of consent for normal sex from 14 to 16, EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) has commenced a campaign to have the age of consent for anal sex lowered to 16 from 18. ...

After reading all of the crap that people have been saying regarding Adult Private Social Clubs, I felt that I had to post an article and give my opinion. I am sick and tired of all the religous groups that are saying that there are drugs, prostitution, minors, non-consenting people, and just immoral people at these clubs! First of all, who do these people think they are to decide what is morally right or wrong for me? I believe that I have a good set of morals. I am a law abiding, tax paying citizen, I work full time and...

(AgapePress) - The director of the Culture and Family Institute says the rise in a couple of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) is proof that so-called "safe sex" does not work to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. Federal health officials say syphilis and chlamydia infection rates are on the rise. The federal experts say part of the reason for the rise in syphilis cases -- 81 percent since 2000 -- is the cyclical nature of the disease. However, they also attribute the increase to a reported rise in risky sex among homosexual men. The report from the Centers for Disease...

Louisiana's rate of syphilis cases ranked number one in the nation last year, while its gonorrhea rate placed second and its chlamydia rate was third. State health experts say the numbers are grim but not surprising. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Louisiana's syphilis rate is seven-point-four cases per 100-thousand people, compared with two-point-seven cases per 100-thousand nationally. The state's gonorrhea rate is 234-point-four cases per 100-thousand, while the national figure is 113-point-five per 100-thousand. The chlamydia rate is 485-point-seven per 100-thousand, compared with 319-point-six per 100-thousand nationally.

A quarter of UK sex health clinics cannot treat patients needing urgent help within the recommended 48 hours, the BBC's Panorama programme has found. The programme contacted 269 clinics and found that, in some cases, patients could wait weeks to be seen. Waiting times have grown so much that one clinic was taking bookings nine weeks in advance. The Department of Health said more needed to be done, and it was investing £300m over the next three years. One of the most senior sexual health clinicians in the country, Professor George Kinghorn, told Panorama that the situation amounted to a...

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center revealed Thursday it had administered the wrong kind of penicillin to more than 650 patients treated for syphilis from 1999 to March 2004. At first the center believed only 300 were exposed to the wrong drug. But in a joint report with the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the center said 663 patients at the Center got Bicillin C-R, which contains only half the dose of benzathine penicillin G (brand name: Bicillin L-A) that the CDC recommends for treating the disease. If a syphilis infection is not treated properly, debilitating symptoms...

'Not a simple answer' for desert’s syphilis problem By Brian Joseph The Desert SunPALM SPRINGS -- In the year since health officials warned of a growing syphilis problem here, the alarming but easily curable disease continues to overrun the Coachella Valley.Despite a year of education and testing efforts, Palm Springs alone has a syphilis rate of 81.8 per 100,000 people in 2003, twice the rate of the nation’s No. 1 city for syphilis, San Francisco.As of the end of August, 73 cases were reported in Riverside County, compared with 78 during the same period in 2003. In both years,...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many people mistakenly believe that oral sex is safe, unaware that they can readily catch or pass on syphilis in this manner, according to a report put out by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Moreover, syphilitic sores in the mouth may in turn increase the risk of HIV infection. Dr. C. Ciesielski and colleagues from the Chicago Department of Public Health found that syphilis is increasingly being spread through oral sex. "Persons who are not in a long-term monogamous relationship and who engage in oral sex should use barrier protection (e.g., male condoms or...

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - There were whispers in the Kremlin and salons of Europe for decades but it was never more than idle gossip until a team of Israeli doctors announced that they had solved an 80-year-old medical mystery. Reuters Photo   The posthumous diagnosis by two psychiatrists and a neurologist recently published in the European Journal of Neurology was that the great Russian revolutionary and Soviet icon Vladimir Lenin died an agonizing death from syphilis. "It's an amazing story, the degeneration of Lenin's mental and neurological state," said psychiatrist Dr Eliezer Witztum. The doctors' diagnosis of crippling neurosyphilis that...

 Internet Use and Early Syphilis Infection Among Men Who Have Sex with Men --- San Francisco, California, 1999--2003 During the summer of 1999, an outbreak of early syphilis among men who have sex with men (MSM) who met their sex partners on the Internet (1) presaged a rapidly expanding syphilis epidemic in San Francisco. By 2002, San Francisco had the highest rates of primary and secondary syphilis of any metropolitan area in the United States (2). During 1998--2002, the number of early syphilis cases increased, from 41 cases in 1998 to 495 cases in 2002 (3). Concomitant with the increase...

Antibiotic-resistant strain of syphilis is spreading A fast-spreading mutant strain of syphilis has proved resistant to the antibiotic pills that are offered to some patients as an alternative to painful penicillin shots. Since the late 1990s, doctors and public health clinics have been giving azithromycin to some syphilis patients because the long-acting antibiotic pill was highly effective and easy to use. Four pills taken at once were usually enough to cure syphilis. But now researchers at University of Washington in Seattle have found at least 10 percent of syphilis samples from patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics in four cities...

Whispers have circulated for decades that Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party and the totalitarian Soviet state it ushered to power, was afflicted with syphilis throughout his career. Now a new study turns that speculation into a retrospective ... In an article this month in The European Journal of Neurology,...

MOSCOW, June 21 - Whispers have circulated for decades that Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party and the totalitarian Soviet state it ushered to power, was afflicted with syphilis throughout his career. Now a new study turns that speculation into a retrospective diagnosis. In an article this month in The European Journal of Neurology, three Israeli physicians sift through historical references to build what they regard as a probable diagnosis that Lenin contracted the sexually transmitted disease in Europe years before he led the October Revolution in 1917. Not long after the socialists' victory, the authors write, the illness strengthened...

CDC Suggests Change in Treatment for Gay, Bisexual Men The number of gay and bisexual men who are getting infected with gonorrhea that cannot be cured by the most commonly used antibiotics is increasing rapidly, federal health officials said yesterday. Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea more than doubled between 2002 and 2003, primarily because of a jump from a rate of 1.8 percent to 4.9 percent among gay and bisexual men, according to preliminary data collected at sexually transmitted disease clinics in 23 cities, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Massachusetts and New York City have reported similar findings. As...

In 1998, syphilis rates were so low the Centers for Disease Control announced a plan to completely eliminate the disease. The agency began an all-out prevention campaign, stepping up syphilis surveillance in New York City and the few counties across the country where it still existed. By 2000, the sexually transmitted infection was at its lowest point since 1941. Soon, the country's top doctors predicted, the dread illness that afflicted Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, and even a pope would be nothing more than an unpleasant memory, gone the way of smallpox and other eradicated diseases. But just six years...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study released on Wednesday. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet...

PHILADELPHIA, March 10 — The expanding recreational use of crystal methamphetamine and Viagra is apparently fueling increases in syphilis, H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases among gay and bisexual men in the United States, according to new studies reported here on Wednesday. At a meeting on preventing sexually transmitted diseases, Dr. Samuel J. Mitchell of the San Francisco Health Department said a study had found that 17.4 percent of 1,263 gay men who had gone to the city's sexually transmitted disease clinic had used crystal in the four weeks before their visit. Crystal users were more than twice as likely...

<p>ATLANTA, Georgia (Reuters) Fewer U.S. teenagers and adults have the virus that causes genital herpes, but health experts said on Monday they were troubled by the recent resurgence in syphilis, especially among gay and bisexual men.</p> <p>The findings, which were presented at the 2004 National STD Prevention Conference in Philadelphia, showed many Americans, especially gay and bisexual men and adolescents, were tuning out safe-sex messages.</p>

The rate of syphilis infection has soared 800 percent in the past two years, prompting Toronto health officials to call for education and prevention funding. Nearly 280 Torontonians tested positive for syphilis in 2003, up nearly 45 percent from 195 in 2002, the Toronto Sun said Monday, quoting a report to be presented next week to Toronto's health board. Those numbers are up from just 30 cases a year from 1997-2001. Nearly three-quarters of the cases were among men who have gay, unprotected sex, the report said. The city tried to fight the rise last spring with a month-long poster...

<p>NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana has the nation's worst gonorrhea rate and is in the top 10 for two other sexually transmitted diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p> <p>2002 was the second year in a row that Louisiana has had more cases of gonorrhea per 100,000 residents than any other - and the fifth in a row that it has been among the five worst for both gonorrhea and chlamydia.</p>

VANCOUVER, Canada (AFP) - Vancouver is facing the worst outbreak of syphilis per capita in the developed world, with city health officials fearful of a looming epidemic of the sexually transmitted disease once thought almost wiped out in North America. Some 254 new cases have been diagnosed locally this year authorities said early this week -- more than the total for North America in two decades, with more expected, said Dr. Michael Rekart of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. "There's a lot of unsafe sex going on in Vancouver and the disease has simply taken hold," Rekart said....

The cult of the condom is failing us in America where the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports the incidents of HIV/AIDS is increasing among the group that knows the most about condoms --- gay men. Yet, policy makers continue to insist that condoms are the answer to AIDs in Africa. We report today on the new CDC numbers and statements by policy makers on World AIDs Day in support of condoms.Spread the word. Yours sincerely,Austin RusePresident Action item:  You may access a copy of the CDC report by going tohttp://www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats/hasr1402/2002SurveillanceReport.pdf ___________________________________________________________________________ CULTURE & COSMOS December 2, 2003...

The syphilis rate in the United States rose in 2002 for the second consecutive year, following a decade-long decline that led to an all-time low in 2000, according to new data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The overall increase occurred despite continued declines in syphilis among African Americans and women. The increase is due to large increases in reported syphilis cases among men, particularly "gay and bisexual men" according to a report from the Centers for the Disease Control (CDC). The data, published in the November 21 issue of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly...

<p>With a top national ranking it could surely do without, San Francisco has surpassed Detroit as the city with the highest per-capita rate of syphilis in the United States.</p> <p>Driven by an increase in new cases among gay white men, the nation's syphilis rate rose 9.1 percent in 2002, the second consecutive increase after a decade of decline that had raised hopes the sexually transmitted disease could be eliminated in the country.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Syphilis rates rose dramatically for the second straight year in the United States, particularly among gay and bisexual men, a finding that has health officials worried about an increase in HIV/AIDS cases in the coming years. Overall, the U.S. syphilis rate rose by 9 percent between 2001 and 2002, the second consecutive increase from an all-time low in 2000, according to figures released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The bulk of the increase occurred among men, rising by about 27 percent overall, including a staggering increase of more than...

<p>ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) --The nation's syphilis rate has climbed for the second year in a row, mostly because of an increase in cases among gay and bisexual men, the government said Thursday.</p> <p>Between 2001 and 2002, the syphilis rate rose 9.1 percent from 2.2 cases per 100,000 people to 2.4 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The rate had dropped every year between 1990 and 2000 before reversing course.</p>

<p>ATLANTA (AP) --  The nation's syphilis rate has climbed for the second year in a row, mostly because of an increase in cases among gay and bisexual men, the government said Thursday.</p> <p>Between 2001 and 2002, the syphilis rate rose 9.1 percent from 2.2 cases per 100,000 people to 2.4 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The rate had dropped every year between 1990 and 2000 before reversing course.</p>