(Jack Mackenroth, on the left, with other members of NYC's gay aquatics team. Photo credit: Outsports.com.)NYT blog omits recent hysteria:
Gay TV star had staph infection
I'm sure every other gay man in America, or at least those gays who watch reality shows, already knows about the handsome Jack Mackenroth and his bout with a staph infection last year, and his being quite public about it, raising much-needed awareness for problem.
Well, I did not know about him until today, when I read a New York Times health blog, written by Tara Parker-Pope, and an entry on it from two day ago:
The fashion reality competition Project Runway got a scary dose of reality recently when one of its contestants came down with an infection caused by MRSA, the virulent strain of drug-resistant bacteria that captured headlines last fall after the deaths of two young students.
New York fashion designer Jack Mackenroth, 38, was diagnosed with community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and has since recovered. But the emergence of MRSA on reality TV comes amidst warnings that the potentially deadly bacteria has become more common.
Last fall, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a report that MRSA appears to be killing more people annually than AIDS, emphysema or homicide, taking an estimated 19,000 lives in 2005.
Good of this Times blog to delve into the MSRA matter and inform gays like me about Mackenroth, but it's curious to see this entry posted this week, without any real new news hook to it.
The writer says the nasty bug was big news last fall with the death of two straight students, and nothing is said about the headlines circling the globe for the past two weeks, including in the Times.
She also writes about a JAMA article from last fall, omitting any reference to the UCSF study published last week on the Annals of Internal Medicine web site.
Is Tara Parker-Pope unaware of the media hysteria over gays and staph infections? I think she should have made at least a passing reference to what's happened with MSRA and gay men recently. Don't you agree?
Those concerns aside, the comments on this Times blog entry, with thoughtful replies from Tara Parker-Pope, provide a terrific education about staph infections and control them.
Michael, there are space considerations whenever one is publishing a story. There's always the possibility that given the choice between publishing useful news and commenting on the past two weeks of MRSA drivel, she'd go with the useful info.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you're going to hate hearing this, but for many people, inflammatory, misleading crap coming out of a local Health Department or college isn't that earth-shattering - even if that Health Dept. is in San Francisco.
Hi Michael: thanks for the link to my blog posting. As the author of the post, I want to respond because I think this is an important issue. As you noted yourself, there is the potential for "media hysteria'' around this issue, and I certainly don't want to contribute to it. It didn't seem fair to cite the recent stories about gays and staph in an article about Jack and Project Runway, when his infection occurred in June. The recent stories about gays and staph involve a new strain of bacteria. There is no indication that was what afflicted Jack. To my knowledge, he had community-acquired MRSA, the same bacteria that made headlines recently after the JAMA article and the deaths of two young school kids. I think in writing about this issue, one has to be careful not to label all gay men as vectors of disease. Jack's infection was in his nose -- and lots of staph infections occur on the nose or legs or abdomen. However, staph also is commonly found around the genitals and anus. Staph infections and MRSA can affect anyone. I think it's wrong to label one group more at risk and give others a false sense of security. THere is a difference between the CDC finding "clusters" of cases and making a finding that one particular group is at higher risk. It seems to me that it is a particular type of behavior - not a type of person -- that is the risk here. Unprotected anal sex is the risk factor, and as you know, there are many people, gay and straight, who engage in this practice. Also, there are many gay men who practice safe sex, and many gay men in monogamous relationships. Maybe I am treading too carefully here, and time will tell if MRSA as well as this new scary strain of MRSA is legitimately a bigger risk for gay men than the rest of us. But until then, I want to be careful and responsible in how I report this issue. Also, given that this article was about a particular individual, a real person, i thought it was important to make it clear that Jack contracted CA-MRSA, the strain that was in the news this fall, and not to imply that his infection was related to the recent more-scary bacteria strain in the news of late. As you can see, much thought went into this, and I very much appreciate your comments and feedback, as well as those of your readers..
ReplyDeleteKind regards
Tara Parker-Pope
Hi Tara,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for replying and giving a full explanation of where you were coming from in what you wrote on Jack and MRSA. I'm so glad you started a discussion on the Times' health blog, about staph infection problems. All of the strains and how prevalent they are and who they strike can be very confusing, due to media ignorance.
And thanks for giving the update on Jack, which was the first time I'd read about him. Glad he's going well.
michael
Michael:
ReplyDeleteBx Turtle Bulletin has a good rundown of how the antigay crowd is using Diep's public comments to whip up antigay hatred: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/is-mrsa-the-new-gay-plague/
By the way: I defended you from a commenter over at DailyKos who apparently hasn't watched TV or surfed online in the past month and so was unaware of how MRSA was being used by the homophobes as a club with which to bash gays.