MedicineInfectious DiseasesSexuality StudiesHiv PreventionSexual Health EducationSexual OffensesPrevention Of Sexual TransmissionSexual HealthSexual Health PreventionSexually Transmitted Infection EpidemiologySexually Transmitted Infection PreventionSexually Transmitted InfectionsSexually Transmitted Infection Control
"THE CRACK HOUSE of today has become what the gay bathhouse was yesterday with regard to all sexually transmitted diseases," says the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) director of the Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). Willard Cates, Jr, MD, MPH, speaking at the 1988 STD National Conference in Boston, drew this analogy to help explain the dramatic recent rise in syphilis and other STDs among heterosexuals (<i>MMWR</i>1988;37:486-489 and<i>JAMA</i>1988;260: 1533-1534 [LEADS FROM THE MMWR]). While the incidence of STDs among homosexual males has dropped sharply in the past few years and continues to decrease as a result of behavioral changes attributable to the advent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), there is an ongoing rise in such disease, particularly among certain segments of the heterosexual population, to a level unseen here in almost 40 years. Even as transmission continues for all the well-recognized reasons, Cates said, CDC epidemiologists