Free Republic

MOSCOW, June 21 - Whispers have circulated for decades that Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party and the totalitarian Soviet state it ushered to power, was afflicted with syphilis throughout his career. Now a new study turns that speculation into a retrospective diagnosis. In an article this month in The European Journal of Neurology, three Israeli physicians sift through historical references to build what they regard as a probable diagnosis that Lenin contracted the sexually transmitted disease in Europe years before he led the October Revolution in 1917. Not long after the socialists' victory, the authors write, the illness strengthened...

I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT WHY THE BOSTON GLOBE would sound Paul Revere's alarm over a new treatment-resistant strain of gonorrhea, when that seems so damning of modern lifestyles. By the eighth paragraph I understood: The Globe's take is that Gov. Mitt Romney's government is the culprit for reducing the health department's budget for the testing of sexually transmitted diseases. Still, whether from good motives or bad (as in Philippians 1:15-18), it's good to have the nation's politically correct epidemic finally outed. Satan has proved as good as his word. He once said of forbidden fruit, "When you eat of it...

DUBLIN (AFP) - The number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) notified in Ireland during 2002 was the highest on record, a government agency said. NDSC Photo Yahoo! Health Have questions about your health?Find answers here.   The number of STIs rose by 7.9 percent to 10,471 in 2002, the National Disease Surveillance Centre (NDSC) said. "Notified STIs have been increasing steadily each year since 1994, increasing by 157 percent between 1994 and 2002 and by 370 percent between 1989 and 2002," it said. The largest annual increase in 2002 was for infectious Hepatitis B, which rose by over 46 percent....

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that men who smoke risk cutting 7.3 years off their lives. Oxford University's International Journal of Epidimiology, 1997, reports "...Life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men...nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Judging by the years at risk, homosexual activity is up to three times deadlier than smoking. Click on the link and you will be directed to where you can click on another link to see the official...

A drug-resistant form of gonorrhea with an overwhelmingly disproportionate effect on homosexuals is making its way eastward from Hawaii and California, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. The data presented "show that drug resistant gonorrhea is a rapidly emerging health concern, particularly for gay and bisexual men," the CDC's STD prevention director John Douglas told reporters last week. Incidences of the drug-resistant disease are 12 times higher for homosexual and bisexual men than for other men, based on data acquired in clinics from 30 U.S. cities between 2002 and 2003, the Washington Blade reported. Homosexual men...

CDC Suggests Change in Treatment for Gay, Bisexual Men The number of gay and bisexual men who are getting infected with gonorrhea that cannot be cured by the most commonly used antibiotics is increasing rapidly, federal health officials said yesterday. Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea more than doubled between 2002 and 2003, primarily because of a jump from a rate of 1.8 percent to 4.9 percent among gay and bisexual men, according to preliminary data collected at sexually transmitted disease clinics in 23 cities, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Massachusetts and New York City have reported similar findings. As...

ATLANTA (AP) _ The government recommended Thursday that doctors switch to a different drug to treat gonorrhea among gay and bisexual men. The drug Cipro and the rest of the class of fluoroquinolone antibiotics _ long the standard treatment for the sexually transmitted disease _ no longer should be used as a first-line drug for men who have sex with men, federal health officials said. That's because of the rise of drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea among homosexuals. Cipro and its cousins remain the frontline treatment for heterosexuals with gonorrhea, health officials said, because drug-resistant strains are rare in that group....

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's multi-billion-dollar adult porn industry ground to a virtual halt on Thursday after a popular actor tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS (news - web sites). Industry advocates immediately called for a 60-day moratorium on filming so that others could be tested. Actor Darren James tested positive for HIV (news - web sites) on Wednesday in screening conducted routinely on the industry's 1,200 regular actors by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare (AIM) Foundation, the foundation's Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell (news) said. They must show negative tests to keep working in the industry, Mitchell said, adding...

In 1998, syphilis rates were so low the Centers for Disease Control announced a plan to completely eliminate the disease. The agency began an all-out prevention campaign, stepping up syphilis surveillance in New York City and the few counties across the country where it still existed. By 2000, the sexually transmitted infection was at its lowest point since 1941. Soon, the country's top doctors predicted, the dread illness that afflicted Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, and even a pope would be nothing more than an unpleasant memory, gone the way of smallpox and other eradicated diseases. But just six years...

CHICAGO (AP) - That tiny bit of print on a condom packet is at the center of a raging debate now that President George W. Bush has asked the Food and Drug Administration to modify the current warning to include information about human papillomavirus, commonly called HPV or genital warts. On one side are scientists who believe that condoms should be promoted as a crucial line of defense against several STDs and cervical cancer. On the other are groups that advocate waiting for sex until marriage, and who see the dangers of HPV as an argument for their cause. Justin...

Skimmed this article this morning, they said the disease in question may have been an unidentified STD that Kerry contracted after his first marriage while he was dating Hollywood starlets.Democrats still refusing to release Kerry's medical records, even when confronted with the article.

'Crystal Meth' Use Boosts STD Rates Among Gay Men Thu Mar 11, 11:47 PM ET By Randy Dotinga HealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDayNews) -- Crystal methamphetamine -- or "speed" -- seems to be a driving factor behind higher rates of sexually transmitted disease among gay and bisexual men. In one study from San Francisco, gay men who visited a health clinic were twice as likely to be infected with the AIDS virus if they had recently used the illegal drug. And they were nearly five times as likely to be diagnosed with syphilis. Armed with the new statistics, federal...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study released on Wednesday. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study released on Wednesday. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet...

<p>A dangerous form of gonorrhea that can't be treated with standard antibiotics has swiftly established a foothold in Massachusetts, highlighting a resurgence of sexually transmitted illnesses across New England, disease trackers report.</p> <p>The new germ was first detected in the state in 2002. By last year, one of every seven gonorrhea patients tested positive for the bacteria, which cannot be treated with the cheapest antibiotic pills. Maine reported its first case in January.</p>

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department on Wednesday. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet sex...

<p>Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those who don't pledge abstinence, according to a study that examined the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents. Those who make a public pledge to abstain until marriage delay sex, have fewer sex partners and get married earlier, according to the data, gathered from adolescents ages 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later. But the two groups' STD rates were statistically similar.</p>

Complete sexual freedom. That was the dream promoted by feminists. The dream has cost America dearly. Several reports released last week -- by Advocates for Youth and the Alan Guttmacher Institute -- conclude that half of all young Americans will get a sexually transmitted disease by age 25. Sexual liberation was achieved. According to the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States, 49 percent of women aged 18 to 19 had sex with at least two partners in the year 2002. Eighty-one percent of women aged 20 to 24 in 2002 had become sexually active before the age...

<p>People age 15 to 24 account for far more cases of sexually transmitted diseases than any other age group, driving a multi-billion dollar medical problem, new studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.</p> <p>Those young Americans - half of whom will get an STD before age 25 - accounted for 9.1 million of the 18.9 million new cases reported in 2000, even though they make up only a quarter of the sexually active population.</p>

(AgapePress) - Researchers are warning of an HIV outbreak on college campuses in North Carolina. A study conducted by the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services indicates that up to 60 college students in the state may have become infected with the virus that causes AIDS. The study found that 25 male college students in a three-county region of North Carolina have been diagnosed with HIV since 2001, and nearly 90% of those students were black men whose infections resulted from homosexual sex. Lead researcher Dr. Lisa Hightow, a fellow in infectious...