A New ‘Gay Disease’?

[ZombieHorde]

A drug-resistant strain of staph is infecting some gay men, but experts say a lot of the media coverage got it wrong.

The headlines this week about a new "gay" infection were dramatic. FLESH-EATING BUG SPREADS AMONG GAYS, said one Australian newspaper, referring to a study about an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection affecting homosexual men in San Francisco and other American cities. EPIDEMIC FEARED--GAYS MAY SPREAD DEADLY STAPH INFECTION TO GENERAL POPULATION, shouted a press release from the Concerned Women for America, a conservative public-policy group.

But is there a new HIV-like public health epidemic on the horizon? Not likely, says Dr. Henry (Chip) Chambers, coauthor of the study, which was published this week in the online edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine. "This is definitely not the new AIDS," says Chambers, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "HIV is a life-threatening disease that is incurable and necessitates lifelong treatment," adds Bill Stackhouse, director of the Institute for Gay Men's Health at the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York.

snip

Gay men's health advocates point out that MRSA can be spread through any kind of skin-to-skin contact, either sexual or nonsexual, without regard for sexual orientation. And they have been very critical of the media for its focus on the sexual aspects of the story. "It's very unfortunate," says GMHC's Stackhouse. "It's very stigmatizing, it's alarmist, it's homophobic and it's just unnecessary."

Stackhouse believes that no one benefits if USA300 gets labeled as a "gay disease." When that happens, he says, "people who aren't gay don't see themselves at risk, and there is a risk out there," he adds. "This kind of stigma presents a challenge. 'I'm not gay, so I'm not at risk,' whether it's about HIV, whether it's about MRSA. That's the big downside to this kind of reporting."

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More to this story at link:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=221

[K Gardner]

1. MRSA is an equal opportunity infection. Its growth in the community has been well-documented

for many years and is well known to the medical community. It spreads among children in public schools and healthcare workers and pretty much anyone who has contact with any other person on a day-to-day basis. To portray MRSA as having anything at all to do with the gay community is offensive and dishonest and appalling.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. MRSA, with which we've been dealing for DECADES, is sure a handly

propaganda weapon.

MKJ

[Warpy]

3. First, they've hashed up their terminology in order to be lurid

"Flesh eating disease" is necrotizing fasciitis, caused by a Strep A bacteria, one that is easily knocked down by plain old pennicillin if it's caught early enough. The problem is that it attacks the fascia that holds our skin on over other tissues, causing the skin over it to die. It can spread very fast and require amputation rather than grafting.

Resistant staph is in the community now and spreading fastest among jocks in blood sports. There are several different topical drugs to treat it.

We could have kept resistant staph out of the community had hospitals not been too cheap to give us scrub privileges (changing in and our of street clothes into scrubs at the hospital, never wearing scrubs home) and providing us with shoe covers when we were dealing with infected patients.

However, men like the author of this piece will never let facts get in the way of a good gay bashing.

[dkf]

4. Its not a gay disease for goodness sakes.

Isn't it occurring a lot in the sports world? I think thats why they have anti-bacterial wipes in the fitness clubs.

But if it is appearing in the Gay community isn't that helpful to know?

[Ian David]

5. He said "staff."

"'Staff' infection.. duh huh huh huh... Do you have an infucktion on your 'staff.? Duh huh..."

[ZombieHorde]

6. Funny.

p.s. Kucinich rules!

[TechBear_Seattle]

7. The Seattle Gay News has a great article debunking the hysteria

Report of 'flesheating bacteria' outbreak in Gay men causes controversy

Last week's report in The New York Times of a drug-resistant strain of "flesh-eating bacteria" in Gay communities in San Francisco and Boston caused a nationwide reaction. The bacteria in question is MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a common, usually benign bacteria with an estimated 53 million worldwide carriers. After reading the Times' take on the Annals of Internal Medicine's report (www.annals.org), some concerned citizens were sent scrambling for information, while others used the story as ammunition for their own agendas.

...

Duncan Osborne, an associate editor at New York's Gay City News, sent a letter to the The New York Times blasting the story. "Your reporter, Lawrence K. Altman, wrote 'the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse.' The authors of the study did not reach that conclusion. At the very start of the online study, they wrote that 'sexual risk behavior was not assessed.'

"I question if Altman actually read this study. I do not see how a person can reach the conclusion that Altman reported when the study unambiguously did not support that conclusion."

Osborne goes on to point out that the first reports of the resistant strain were from schoolchildren, athletes and prisoners. "Far from being Altman's modern-day Typhoid Mary," he writes, "Gay men are merely the latest population to contend with MRSA."

The full article can be read at http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews36_03/page1.cfm

A related article, TruthWinsOut slams extremist groups for exploiting infection fears, can be read at http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews36_03/page4.cfm

[closeupready]

9. Yeah, that line about being spread most easily through anal intercourse struck me as odd

because it would seem to be easier to spread through shaking hands, esp. if those engaging in intercourse are using condoms, in which case there is less skin-to-skin contact than there is by shaking hands (except if the condom breaks).

No, that bit was just an attempt to gross out the article's readers.

[hulklogan]

8. So the 20 jocks who got MRSA at the local high school are all gay?

I wish we had MRSA to turn all the jocks gay when I was in high school back in the 90s!