After Linking New Strain of Staph to Gay Men, University Scrambles to Clarify

NY Times ^ | January 20, 2008 | JESSE McKINLEY

[reaganaut1]

On Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of California at San Francisco announced that gay men were

[Mr Ramsbotham]

"The way they keep targeting gays as if gays alone are responsible for it, its like H.I.V./AIDS all over again,” said Colin Thurlow, 60, who is gay and lives in San Francisco. “And we’re sick and tired of it.

Politicizing disease hasn't done much for the so-called "gay community" either. Consider that the treatment routinely prescribed for HIV-positive individuals--even those who are without symptoms--usually causes horrible side effects and consequent immune system depletion, actually giving AIDS to people who wouldn't otherwise have gotten it. Yet anyone who suggests that something other than HIV is causing AIDS, such as immune system depletion through continuous promiscuous anal sex, drug abuse and the rampant use of antibiotics, is accused of "blaming the victim." And the terrible drugs that are being pushed on the HIV-positive, which are nothing short of poisons, were pushed through by activists demanding that society "do something" to cure an illness that is completely avoidable through behavioral changes.

We've politicized disease, and now we're in the process of politicizing climatology.

[Fee]

Recent studies show that those who survive HIV on anti HIV drugs, after decades (we now have data) of taking the drugs that keep them alive, the side affects on their health is pronounce. HIV patients on AIDS drugs exhibit health problems of a late 60 year old person when the patient reaches his 50’s.

[Disambiguator]

And sure enough, the study, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was quickly picked up by reporters round the world and across the Internet, including a London tabloid which dubbed the disease “the new H.I.V.”

I'm surprised that no-one has made a joke out of this yet.

[CGTRWK]

15% of AIDS patients contracting the disease innocently is an enormous overstatement.

Through 2005, 55% of US AIDS cases were contracted by homosexuals being homosexual. 26% were druggies sharing needles. 17% were “high risk heterosexual contact”, which is a euphemism for women sleeping with bisexuals. The large majority of this group is black women infected by black men who became infected practicing homosexuality in prison.

Only 2% of total cases were blood transfusions, accidental contact, perinatal, unknown, or other. Most of which took place early on before the disease was fully understood. For 2005 only, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the ‘other’ category had shrunk to 1%.

And you and I are paying $20 billion a year to find treatments and buy free drugs for these perverts.

[ROTB]

I used to think a staph infection meant your people are in for some downtime.

[Pilated]

I am tired of these perverts being shoved at me by the media. I will always until the day I die know that men on men sex is not the norm and is a health threat to every one. They get what they deserve. They know that men on men sex will KILL you so let them die.

[VeniVidiVici]

The real story here is the fact that the university is being beat into submission by the gay activists and the government. Unapproved, Un-PC speak is the reason.

Gotta love this money quote from the article:

Mr. Diep, 29, said on Friday he regretted not being more thorough in communicating his research to reporters. He said that the term “general population” was part of medical jargon used in the report, which did not translate well.

“It’s really meant to be used to mean all inclusive, including the men-who-have-sex-with-men population,” he said.

[Spunky]

My 83 year old stepmother contracted MRSA while in a nursing home. There was a male head nurse who treated her. He did appear quite feminine to me though.

When I learned she had MRCA (which I had never heard of) I looked it up on the Internet and they said it is quite prevalent in hospitals and nursing homes.

She consequently died.

[matthew fuller]

Preventive measures include frequently cleaning hands, clothes and open wounds, abstention from having sex or any intimate relations with gays.

[Lancer_N3502A]

And God shall smite the for thy's transgressions

[Lancey Howard]

“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. You want to make sure it’s as right as possible and written up in a form that reviewers would understand what you’re trying to say, and do it in a clear manner so it’s not subject to misinterpretation. Which is what happened later, it appears.”

One of the major sore points for some critics was a quote attributed to the report’s lead author, Bien Diep, a researcher who said he was concerned about “a potential spread of this strain into the general population.”p> Diep, 29, said on Friday he regretted not being more thorough in communicating his research to reporters. He said that the term “general population” was part of medical jargon used in the report, which did not translate well.

“It’s really meant to be used to mean all inclusive, including the men-who-have-sex-with-men population,” he said.

Hilarious!! These people are spinning like a top to be politically correct.
They are disgraceful.

[NinoFan]

Regardless of whether one believes one is born or chooses to be gay, this issue is a direct result of the choices that many gays make. If the gay community was largely monogamous and non-drug using, none of this disease thing would be much of a problem. Instead of sleeping with one (or more) different guys every night, a gay man (if he believes in the propaganda about wanting love/marriage that he most likely spouts off all the time) should be looking for a longterm partner.

There are people who contract deadly diseases through no fault of their own. Hey, if you get AIDS through a blood transfusion or rape, I feel bad for ya. But if you slept with 100s of people, you dug your own damn grave.

[NinoFan]

AIDS should be HIV in that previous post.

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

London tabloid which dubbed the disease “the new H.I.V.”

London. Tabloid. CSUSF scrambles to clarify.

Academic reaction to a tabloid? What did they ever clarify about BatBoy or the Alien that shook hands with all the Presidents?

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Once again, PC kills. The gay lobby jumped on this one and is trying to silence the scientists who revealed the truth.
The left is trying to promote homosexuality and with it the diseases that accompany it.
They would rather have people dead!!

[Old Professer]

It is indeed an interesting time in which we live, a time where, if one dares to tell the truth about a subject tacitly off-limits, he can expect to learn the rules against such naivety as he is ushered out the door.

Has everybody forgotten that what we call AIDS is short for acquired immune-deficiency syndrome?

And isn’t that diagnosis supported and bolstered by the fact that those who have the syndrome are susceptible to almost any opportunistic pathogen?

[Tanniker Smith]

Staff staph>

Anals of Internal Medicine??

[ricks_place]

Methamphetamine Use and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Skin Infections

Table 2. Risk factors for MRSA skin and soft tissue infection*
Risk factors	Case-patients,no. (%)	Controls, no. (%)	Crude OR (95% CI)	Adjusted OR† (95% CI)
Drug use and medical history
Recent skin infection‡	34 (42.0)	22 (7.8)	8.41 (4.54–15.59)	7.92 (4.10–15.28)
Recent methamphetamine use‡	8 (9.9)	5 (1.8)	5.64 (1.80–17.69)	5.10 (1.55–16.79)
Antimicrobial agents within 6 months	40 (49.4)	114 (40.1)	1.43 (0.87–2.34)	1.52 (0.89–2.60)
Recent hospitalization, surgery, or dialysis‡	8 (9.9)	27 (9.5)	1.06 (0.46–2.44)	1.24 (0.51–2.97)
Diabetes	10 (12.4)	23 (8.1)	1.61 (0.73–3.57)	2.03 (0.83–4.98)
Liver disease	1 (1.2)	9 (3.2)	0.38 (0.05–3.07)	0.59 (0.70–4.91)
Contact exposure
Household contact with someone with skin infection	21 (25.9)	27 (9.5)	3.26 (1.72–6.17)	3.19 (1.58–6.48)
Crowding (>1 person/bedroom)	44 (54.3)	111 (39.1)	2.06 (1.22–3.45)	1.78 (1.004–3.15)§
Recent sexual contact‡	48 (59.3)	182 (64.1)	0.85 (0.51–1.42)	0.68 (0.38–1.22)
Recent sexual contact with someone with skin infection‡	7 (8.6)	6 (2.1)	4.28 (1.40–13.08)	5.42 (1.68–17.50)
Recent contact sports‡	9 (11.1)	11 (3.9)	2.92 (1.17–7.31)	1.37 (0.47–4.03)
Recent jail‡	4 (4.9)	9 (3.2)	1.46 (0.44–4.90)	1.75 (0.48–6.42)
Hygiene practices
Frequent skin picking	17 (20.1)	24 (8.5)	2.77 (1.40–5.47)	2.53 (1.22–5.23)
Bathe less than daily	5 (6.2)	31 (10.9)	0.50 (0.19–1.34)	0.56 (0.19–1.67)

[Marysecretary]

What about the clinton inspired blood collection from prisoners who gave thousands of people AIDS? These leftists just don’t care. I think they sent the blood to Canada.

[neverdem]

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. You want to make sure it’s as right as possible and written up in a form that reviewers would understand what you’re trying to say, and do it in a clear manner so it’s not subject to misinterpretation. Which is what happened later, it appears.”

One of the major sore points for some critics was a quote attributed to the report’s lead author, Bien Diep, a researcher who said he was concerned about “a potential spread of this strain into the general population.”

This is rich.

Emergence of Multidrug-Resistant, Community-Associated, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clone USA300 in Men Who Have Sex with Men

"Results: The overall incidence of multidrug-resistant USA300 infection in San Francisco was 26 cases per 100 000 persons (95% CI, 16 to 36 cases per 100 000 persons); the incidence was higher in 8 contiguous ZIP codes with a higher proportion of male same-sex couples. Male–male sex was a risk factor for multidrug-resistant USA300 infection (relative risk, 13.2 [CI, 1.7 to 101.6]; P < 0.001) independent of past MRSA infection (relative risk, 2.1 [CI, 1.2 to 3.7]; P = 0.007) or clindamycin use (relative risk, 2.1 [1.2 to 3.6]; P = 0.007). The risk seemed to be independent of HIV infection. In San Francisco, multidrug-resistant USA300 manifested most often as infection of the buttocks, genitals, or perineum. In Boston, multidrug-resistant USA300 was recovered exclusively from men who have sex with men."

From the Editor's Note inserted into the original article from the Annals of Internal Medicine:

"Implication"

"Multidrug-resistant USA300 MRSA infection is especially common among men who have sex with men. It might be sexually transmitted in this population."

Read the methods. If they didn't admit to being homosexuals, their charts were checked to see if they had Pap smears done where the sun doesn't shine.