The disease making a comeback with the Heroin epidemic and gangs

A two part series in the NYTimes.  One Two

this is what I posted on my main blog about part one of the story:



Syphilis is back, and the NYTimes blames gangs, drug s and "uneducated doctors".

yes, Syphilis is spread by IV drug use, and this is about the heroin injection epidemic.

And in Asia/Russia, IV drug use, not sex, is the major cause of HIV...

the article notes they are going back to the good old days of tracing contacts (a practice that was discouraged when HIV became a protected disease).

But if you read way down in the article, you find that syphilis is common in another group: men who have sex with men.

When I was in medical school, we learned syphilis was the "Great pretender" because it looked like so many other diseases.

and the underbelly of evil is here:

Usually such efforts lead to sagas of unrelenting grimness: mothers who prostitute daughters, and men who forcibly inject runaways with drugs to hook them, a practice known as guerrilla pimping.

Something to remember the next time you hear a libertarian insist that "sex workers" like to do their jobs.

In the good old days (until it was stopped because there were so few cases, in the 1970's)  everyone admitted to a hospital got a screening test for syphilis because often people didn't know that they had been exposed, especially women.

Sigh. In our prayers.

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part two discusses how public health officials investiage contacts of those diagnosed with the disease.


read the whole thing.

But every day, the disease intervention specialists keep reporting the same harsh story, a growing specter of broken young lives....

Th

And where, exactly, are all the clergymen in the Bible Belt state?

yes, they are there, trying to help.