January 20, 2008
DAMN THE DAMNING FACTS!:
After Linking New Strain of Staph to Gay Men, University Scrambles to Clarify (JESSE McKINLEY, 1/19/08, NY Times)
On Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of California at San Francisco announced that gay men were “many times more likely than others” to acquire a new strain of drug-resistant staphylococcus, a nasty, fast-spreading and potential lethal bacteria known as MRSA USA300. [...]The report also inadvertently offered ammunition for many antigay groups, including the conservative Concerned Women for America, which issued a release on Wednesday citing the “sexual deviancy” of gay men as leading to AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea.
“The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease,” the release read.
Another group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, also cited the report as a way of proving that “homosexual behavior is unhealthy.”
“Why aren’t all schoolchildren being taught that there are special health risks associated with homosexual behavior and that they should ‘just say no’ to homosexuality?” read a released posted on the group’s Web site.
National gay rights groups were quick to label such talk as “hysteria,” even as researchers as the university scrambled to clarify their findings. On Friday, it issued an apology, saying their release had “contained some information that could be interpreted as misleading.”
“We deplore negative targeting of specific populations in association with MRSA infections or other public health concerns,” it concluded. Dr. Henry Chambers, one of the report’s authors and a professor of medicine at the university, said he was surprised by how the report had been spun.
“I think we were looking at this from a scientific point of view and not projecting any political impact,” he said. “We were focusing on the data.”
The scientific method is death on political correctness. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2008 8:14 AM
The original AIDS epidemic in this country was also handled the same way as this MRSA outbreak. HIV is a communicable disease and AIDS is the clinical manifestation of that infection. Had HIV/AIDS been treated like all other contagious illnesses (TB, cholera, measles, syphilis, gonorrhea, and etc.) with reporting of contacts in order to control the spread rather than as a political issue, the number of dead homosexual men would have been much lessened.
Posted by: morry at January 20, 2008 10:47 AMAs has been said here before, it is all about access to the anus.
And, as a corollary, it is about inflating the homosexual population. Andrew and Hollywood want everyone to believe the percentage is approaching 10%. That makes them a "minority" group.
Posted by: ratbert at January 20, 2008 1:19 PMCivilizations which abandon their cultural aversion to these unsanitary practices go the way of the Caananites and Mayans.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 20, 2008 8:36 PM