STD Incidence Ranked By City

A website that sells apartment rental agreements has, for some reason, compiled CDC data to rank US cities by incidence of STDs per capita. HIV is not included in their ranking. They write:

Despite our puritan heritage, Americans really love to have sex. It turns out, a lot of us like to have sex without protection, too. Using publicly available data sources, we’ve mapped sexually transmitted diseases across most major cities in the USA. The military helped cities rank strongly in the top 10, with Norfolk Naval Base, Ft. Hood, and Ft. Bragg all pushing their cities to the top. The data used here comes from the CDC for 2013, and reflects reports of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. (Herpes data is not collected). To normalize the data, we measured rates per 100,000 people. We chose only to show cities with a significant amount of population, so rural counties are not show on this map. Specifically, we only ranked cities with a population of at least 50,000 or more. We ignored absolute STDs and only used the rate per 100k to establish rankings. We opted to treat Washington, DC. as a city and not a state. We also chose to represent each borough of NYC separately.

See the full top 100 at the link.

Teens Invent STD-Detecting Condom

Buzzfeed reports:

Creators Muaz Nawaz, Daanyaal Ali, and Chirag Shah, from London’s Isaac Newton Academy, wanted to “make detecting harmful STIs safer than ever before” without invasive testing. Their invention, cleverly named the S.T.EYE, nabbed them the top health innovation prize at the city’s TeenTech Awards, which are intended to promote science, engineering, and technology in schools. At the competition, groups of kids ranging in age from 11 to 16 attempt to create “technology to make life better, simpler or easier.”The condom uses a built-in indicator that changes to a different color depending on the bacteria or infection it detects. The students said it may glow green for chlamydia, yellow for herpes, purple for human papillomavirus, or blue for syphilis. Molecules in the condom attach to the bacteria of common STIs, causing the contraception to fluoresce in low light.

More from Daily Dot:

It’s unclear as to whether the condom detects both the wearer’s and the recipient’s STI statuses, or just the recipient’s. If the latter, that poses some obvious concerns for heterosexual women or gay men who take a passive role during sex. It’s also worth noting that the S.T. Eye has yet to actually come to fruition; in fact, a TeenTech representative was careful to say in an email to the Daily Dot that the team’s idea was “very much a concept and... not a finalized design.” All skepticism aside, though, considering the stigma associated with condom use in our society, it’s awesome to see a group of teenage boys trying to make safe sex cool by trying to reimagine the concept behind the traditional barrier method. Especially when most teenage boys are too busy trying to avoid wearing condoms to begin with.

(Tipped by JMG reader Ray)

Headline Of The Day

Abstinence-only totally works. (Tipped by JMG reader Thom)

WASHINGTON: Rare Strain Of Ocular Syphilis Leaves Two Men Blind

Via the Seattle Times:

Health officials are warning about an unusual cluster of syphilis infections that strike the eyes, with six cases reported in Washington state since mid-December, including four in King County. Two people have been blinded by the disease. That’s an unusually high number of cases of ocular syphilis, which affects fewer than one in every million people in the general population each year, according to Dr. Russell Van Gelder, chair of the ophthalmology department at the University of Washington. Even among people with syphilis, ocular disease is detected in perhaps 10 percent of patients, he added. The King County cases are all men, including three who report having sex with other men, the group most affected by syphilis in the region. Three are HIV-positive; people with HIV are often infected with syphilis, too.

Local officials urge that MSM seek immediate attention for vision-related issues. (Tipped by JMG reader Bill)

Phil Robertson: God Gives Out STDs

Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson appeared on Tony Perkins' radio show yesterday to declare that people get STDs because God is angry about their immoral conduct.

(Via Good As You)

NYC Radio Star Cuts Sexual Health PSA After Trans Prostitute Revelation

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation writes:

In the PSA, which dropped today, Cee calls last week’s declaration “the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life,” but that it was time in both his personal and professional life to be honest about his sexual identity. He said everyone should be proud and honest about who they truly are – citing shocking statistics of HIV and STD rates among youth, black, and Latino populations that arise from deception – and declared the new sexual revolution to be one of both freedom of self and sexual health as a birthright, mirroring AHF’s new Sexual Revolution 2.0 campaign. He also directed viewers to seek STD testing and treatment through the Foundation’s freestdcheck.org website.

The path to Cee’s declaration about receiving fellatio from trans women involved a bust by a male undercover police officer dressed as a transsexual prostitute, followed by a former sexual partner’s releasing an audio recording of the DJ soliciting a transgender woman for oral sex. Cee initially quit his job at HOT 97, but was encouraged to return by station program director Ebro Darden, to whom Cee emotionally opened up on air about his sexual identity last week. The declaration lit up the Twittersphere over the weekend, and where some showed homophobic anger or blasé indifference, there was also a multitude of supportive Tweets indicating a preliminary shift in the previously unquestioned homophobic mentality permeating hip hop fans.

Study: Gay Men Report Fewer Partners

According to a study released last month, gay men report having fewer sex partners even though the rates of HIV infection and other STDs have risen.

The mean number of male sexual partners MSM reported in the previous year fell significantly from 2.9 to 2.3 between the two surveys (p = 0.035) and was more marked in men under 24 years old (mean 2.9 to 2.1 partners, p = 0.027). The number of partners also fell in men aged 35 to 44 from 3.0 to 2.2, though this was not quite statistically significant (p = 0.07).

The fall in the number of partners was statistically significant in men with incomes under 150% of the US federal poverty level (3.0 to 2.1) and in men living in suburban metropolitan areas (3.2 to 2.1) but not in city-centre areas (2.6 in both surveys). There were declines in partner numbers in white (3.0 to 2.5) and black (2.4 to 1.9) men, though these did not reach statistical significance. In general though, there was a consistent picture of fewer partners among most groups.

The study also notes that 15% of gay men surveyed now say they have never been tested for HIV.  Previously that number was 25%. (Via Queerty)

Family Research Council: NYC Is Paying The Price For Sex Education

Via press release from the Family Research Council:

New York City distributes more condoms, performs more abortions, and engages in more explicit sex education than almost any region in the country. Earlier this year, the city even launched a test program called CATCH, Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Healthcare, which gives high school students the option of getting regular birth control injections, the morning-after pill, and condoms at their schools without ever calling parents.

And what has the city gotten for its trouble? Thousands more sexually-related diseases -- most of them incurable, and all of them expensive. According to the CDC, a single case of HIV costs $400,000 to treat over a lifetime. But instead of discouraging promiscuity, the U.S. is pouring millions of dollars into STD treatments -- all because the government doesn't want to confront people about the dangers of premarital sex. In this age of "sexual freedom," our culture -- and now our tax dollars -- are promoting sexual activity with anyone at any time with complete disregard for the physical toll. It's as if sex were the new constitutional right.

The press release claims that "one-third of NYC neighborhoods are in the top 20% for residents with multiple STDs," implying that the referenced 20% is from a survey done nationwide. In fact, the survey was for New York City only.  But according to the Family Research Council, New Yorkers are slutty and diseased compared to the rest of the nation. There truly is nothing they won't lie about.

Tweet Of The Day - Bill Donohue

Donohue is responding to a study issued yesterday by the NYC Department of Health, which observes that the highest rates of STDs are mostly found, unsurprisingly, in the city's poorest neighborhoods.  But don't expect Bill Donohue to acknowledge that Staten Island is quite prosperous compared to the South Bronx.

Among the most severe examples is ZIP code 10474 in Hunts Point, the Bronx, where rates of hepatitis C, chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS all ranked in the top 20 percent of all New York City ZIP codes. Faring even worse was ZIP code 10457, in the Tremont section of the Bronx, which ranked in the top quintile for all seven diseases surveyed. Forty-three percent of residents in the neighborhood live below the federal poverty line, the report said. Overall, the Bronx also had the greatest percentage of ZIP codes – 68 percent – in the top 20 percent citywide for multiple STDs. Nineteen ZIP codes with high rates of poverty in the South Bronx, north-central Brooklyn and northern Manhattan saw top-quintile rates of HIV/AIDS, chlamydia and gonorrhea, the study said.

Zip codes in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen were also in the top 20% due to higher incidences of HIV. 

Porn Companies To Sue Over Condom Law

Last week Los Angeles County voters approved a bill that mandates the usage of condoms in all porn productions.  Adult Video News reports that a coalition of porn companies has sent the county Board Of Supervisors a notice of their intent to sue to overturn to new law.

"We believe that the law is not only unconstitutional on the grounds of forced expression, but also falls within the jurisdiction of the state of California rather than local government," wrote Free Speech Coalition CEO Diane Duke. "Therefore, we will file suit and challenge this intolerable law in court."  Duke also asked the Supervisors to "suspend the implementation of the law until the courts have rendered their decision on the aforementioned issues," but also requested that "as the County moves to develop an implementation plan, we ask that FSC, the industry's trade association, be given a seat at the table."

The letter concludes by reiterating the very real possibility that the industry, or much of it, will move out of the area. "Finally, our industry has been approached, with open arms and tax incentives, to move our adult production to communities that welcome adult production as a vital industry and a positive economic force," it reads. "In the upcoming weeks and months, we will provide a roadmap for adult production to move its over-a-billion-dollar industry and its accompanying 10,000 jobs to these welcoming communities."

Think Progress notes that the concept of barebacking as free speech may actually have some traction in the courts.

Condoms Bill Passes In LA County

Yesterday Los Angeles County voters approved the measure mandating the usage of condoms in all porn productions.

The measure garnered 55.9% of the vote after a hard-fought campaign. "This is a major referendum on the subject of safer sex," said AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein. The measure is sponsored by the foundation, which has been pushing for years to protect adult-film performers from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Under the measure, the cost of the law would be paid for by porn producers, who would have to purchase a public health permit, much like tattoo parlors. Violators would be subject to fines and misdemeanor criminal charges. Weinstein said the question now is whether the adult-film industry and the county government will cooperate. "We have shown our resolve that we are not going to give up on this issue," he said. "Now that the people have spoken so overwhelmingly, it is the responsibility for the Board of Supervisors and the county Health Department to act immediately to enforce this law.”

Porn producers, who largely opposed the bill, say the public should trust them to be self-policing on the issue as they routinely test performers for HIV and other STDs. That claim, however, lost a lot of traction this summer when a straight male porn actor was exposed for having falsified a report noting his positive syphilis diagnosis and shooting several scenes anyway.  Industry observers expect some porn companies to merely relocate outside of the country limits.

Hong Kong AIDS Group Blames Grindr

A Hong Kong AIDS group is blaming Grindr for a local rise in STDs and HIV infections. Gay Star News reports:

Spokesperson for AIDS Concern, Panda Cheung Yin-mei, told China Daily that Grindr ‘is one of the factors that are contributing to the record high levels of infections’. More worryingly, Cheung says attempts to engage with Grindr in order to work together to send a safe-sex message through the app have been obstructed by the American company. "Grindr is a money-making software," says Cheung. "They have tightened monitoring of users and they don't welcome NGOs doing outreach on the Grindr networks. Once they find a phone number is an NGO number, they block the number so the NGO cannot do it again." Cheung added that the problem in Hong Kong is more serious than in other parts of the world where Grindr is popular because of the absence of sex education in schools.

A Grindr spokeman told a local Chinese newspaper: "Grindr strongly encourages our users to engage in safe sex practices, get tested and know their HIV status."

Straight Porn Star Comes Forward, Reveals That He'd Falsified STD Diagnosis

"I started unraveling around mid-June. There was a contract I had with a company for a male enhancement product, and they were going to pay me monthly, but they decided to pull the contract. I was like 'Ah!' I was going into July, and then I got this positive on the syphilis test. It was just slam, slam, slam, and then wham. It was like, how do I deal with this? The doctor was like, get a shot; it’s curable; it’s not as bad as it sounds.

"I went and got the shot, and I was told to wait seven to 10 days before you do anything sexual. I had to cancel work, which just added more pressure and compounded things even further. I am trying to move forward, trying to do business, trying to get things off the ground, but seems like I couldn’t do it. It was just like every time I tried to do something, there was an obstacle. Then this happened. I don’t think my decision making was right around that time, but I was determined to just get back to work, get back to shooting. And that was when everything started to go wrong." - Straight porn star Mr. Marcus, telling the Daily Beast that it was his syphilis diagnosis that has paralyzed much of the porn industry in Los Angeles.

NOTE: By "then this happened" Marcus is referring to falsifying his required STD check-up report by photocopying over the positive result for syphilis. The city of Los Angeles requires condom use in all porn productions, but the recently-passed law has not yet been enforced. A similar bill goes before Los Angeles County voters in November.

Yet Another Circumcision News Item

I am bored to tears with the entire subject, but since about 100 of you sent this last night:

The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its official position on the contentious issue of infant circumcision, stating Monday that the medical benefits of the procedure for baby boys outweigh the small risks. In its first new policy statement on the issue since 1999, the academy said that circumcision reduced risks of urinary tract infections in infants and of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases later in life — and that the complications associated with the procedure were infrequent and mostly minor. But the physicians' group stopped short of recommending the sometimes controversial practice for all newborn boys, urging parents to be guided by their religious, ethical and cultural practices in addition to the science.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has about 60,000 members in North America. The group is very gay friendly and supported LGBT adoption rights for years.

RELATED: The "intactivists" are predictably outraged about the new policy.

Even as the AAP purports to find that the benefits of non-medical neonatal male circumcision outweigh its risks, not even its own Task Force can unequivocally recommend this surgery, but instead states that the health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns. Instead, it focuses much of its argument on urging that health insurance plans and state Medicaid plans cover the costs of the surgery, which is currently not the case in many states. It appears that the AAP is acting more as a trade association for doctors who perform this unnecessary surgery more than 1 million times a year, instead of standing up for the human rights and bodily integrity of the only patient that counts—the baby boy.

New Study: Declining U.S. Circumcision Rate To Increase Sexual Diseases

According to a just-published Johns Hopkins University study, the declining U.S. rate of newborn circumcision will result in higher health costs for the nation when these boys become sexually active adults.

About 55 percent of the 2 million males born each year in America are circumcised, a decrease from 79 percent in the 1980s, according to the report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The procedure, which removes the foreskin from the tip of the penis where bacteria and viruses accumulate, is linked to fewer cases of HIV, herpes, genital warts and genital cancers among men and their sexual partners. “If there were a vaccine that reduced HIV infection, genital herpes and warts, penile cancer, cervical cancer and bacterial vaginosis, it would be promoted as a game changing intervention, and all physicians would encourage their patients to get it,” said Aaron Tobian, a health epidemiologist and pathologist at Johns Hopkins and senior researcher on the study.

“The difference is this is a surgery with very minor complications, and it also has a cultural tone to it.” The lack of protection may boost U.S. health-care costs by $4.4 billion if rates plunge in the next decade to levels seen in Europe, where 10 percent of boys are circumcised, according to the analysis by health economists at Johns Hopkins. Each time a circumcision is avoided, $313 is added in direct illness- related expenses, after taking into account the cost of the procedure, Tobian said in a telephone interview. “All state Medicaid and private insurers should cover male circumcision and we should eliminate all of the current barriers,” he said. “Families should discuss the risks and benefits of the procedure with their physicians and decide what is best for them.”

Medicaid coverage for circumcision has been dropped in many states and the above-linked study notes that private insurers have followed suit.

Syphilis Case Shuts Down LA Porn

Some of the largest companies in the sprawling porn industry centered around Los Angeles have come to a standstill after a performer revealed that he'd hidden his syphilis diagnosis from producers and filmed several scenes knowing that he'd been infected. His name has not been disclosed nor is it known if he performed in gay or straight scenes. (Or both.)

Generally, the porn industry doesn't shut down unless there is a confirmed case of HIV (which happened in both 2010 and 2011). Syphilis, of course, is a curable disease, but can be fatal if left untreated. And since the performer worked several times with a doctored sexually transmitted infection (STI) test before coming forward, there are fears about the disease spreading. While the porn industry is under significant financial pressure due to piracy and the rise of “amateur” Web sites, insiders say this shutdown should not have a noticeable effect on revenues at major studios. Big players in the porn industry typically have a large stockpile of films awaiting release and can ride out a shutdown. The porn industry shoots roughly 20,000 scenes per year. Bigger companies tend to produce four or five films per month – with costs reaching upwards to $300,000 – allowing them to stockpile releases.

This November residents of Los Angeles County will vote on whether condom usage should be mandatory for male performers. That law already exists within the Los Angeles city limits but it has not yet been enforced.

CDC Issues Call For Limiting Usage Of Decreasingly Effective Gonorrhea Med

Via press release from the CDC:

According to the revised guidelines, published today in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the most effective treatment for gonorrhea is a combination therapy: the injectable antibiotic ceftriaxone along with one of two other oral antibiotics, either azithromycin or doxycycline. In the past, gonorrhea has developed resistance to every antibiotic recommended for treatment, leaving the cephalosporins, which include cefixime and ceftriaxone, as the final recommended class of drugs. In light of this history and the recent lab data, CDC researchers are concerned that continued use of cefixime may prompt gonorrhea to develop resistance to all cephalosporins. Limiting the use of cefixime now may help preserve ceftriaxone as a treatment option for a little longer.

BRITAIN: Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea

The British government is telling doctors that the usual course of treatment for gonorrhea is now largely useless.

The Health Protection Agency says we may be heading to a point when the disease is incurable unless new treatments can be found. For now, doctors must stop using the usual treatment cefixime and instead use two more powerful antibiotics. One is a pill and the other a jab. The HPA say the change is necessary because of increasing resistance. [snip] As recently as 2005, no gonorrhoea bacteria with reduced susceptibility to cefixime could be found in the UK. The bacterium that causes the infection - Neisseria gonorrhoeae - has an unusual ability to adapt itself and has gained resistance, or reduced susceptibility, to a growing list of antibiotics - first penicillin itself, then tetracyclines, ciprofloxacin and now cefixime.

HomoQuotable - Dan Savage

"Religious conservatives loved the HPV virus because it killed women. Here was a potentially fatal STI that condoms couldn't protect you from. Abstinence educators pointed to HPV and jumped up and down—they loved to overstate HPV's seriousness and its deadliness—in their efforts to scare kids into saving themselves for marriage. And they fought the introduction of the HPV vaccine tooth-and-nail because vaccinating women against HPV would 'undermine' the abstinence message. Given a choice between your wife, daughter, sister, or mom dying of cervical cancer or no longer being to scream 'HPV IS GOING TO KILL YOU!' at classrooms full of terrified teenagers, socially conservative abstinence 'educators' preferred the former." - Dan Savage, writing for Slog.

Docs Diss Bachmann On HPV Vaccine

The nation's largest pediatricians group has issued a statement denouncing Michele Bachmann's claim that Gardisil causes mental retardation. Bachmann is not directly named in the press release.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation. There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend that girls receive HPV vaccine around age 11 or 12. That’s because this is the age at which the vaccine produces the best immune response in the body, and because it’s important to protect girls well before the onset of sexual activity. In the U.S., about 6 million people, including teens, become infected with HPV each year, and 4,000 women die from cervical cancer. This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer."