Petrelis Files

Editor
Village Voice
New York, NY
April 18, 2004

To the editor:

Sharon Lerner made a minor mistake in her April 14 article, Syphilis Relapse.

She wrote that it was in 1998 when the Centers for Disease Control declared syphilis at an all-time low and the federal agency launched a five-year plan to eliminate the age-old scourge from the U.S.

The year was 1999, not 1998. [1]

The CDC, endowed with $287 million in federal and state funds, promised that 2004 would be the year when syphilis no longer afflicted the country. [2]

But despite the agency's expertise and large pot of money, this sexually transmitted infection is flourishing.

For the last three years national numbers have climbed, but there's been virtually no analysis by public health advocates or the press about what went wrong.

More importantly, Congress has held no hearings into the CDC's syphilis elimination debacle and who at the federal health agency is responsible for this.

The CDC owes the people who contracted syphilis, and taxpayers, answers about why the elimination strategy failed.

Sincerely,

Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA
Ph: 415-621-6267

Sources:
1. http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/syphilispdf.htm
2. http://www.cdc.gov/stopsyphilis/Plan.pdf


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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/lerner.php

The Village Voice
April 14, 2004

Syphilis Relapse
by Sharon Lerner


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 after the bold elimination plan, syphilis is back. Nationally, cases in gay men shot up more than 15 percent in 2001. In New York City, the number of people with symptoms of syphilis has gone up even further, increasing a total of more than 500 percent between 1998 and 2003, from 82 to 531 people, according to preliminary health department data. As of last week, there were an additional 953 people infected with syphilis but without apparent symptoms, according to the health department. Many more cases of syphilis likely go unreported.

[snip]