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Prevention and Politics

Christina M. Marra, MD

Arch Neurol. 2004;61:1505-1508.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

INTRODUCTION

In the first half of the 20th century, syphilis was an important public health problem in the United States. With the advent of penicillin and the end of the Second World War, the incidence of syphilis declined. Nonetheless, epidemics sprouted about every 10 years. In the mid-1980s, one such epidemic involved men who had sex with men, and with the adoption of safe sex practices as a consequence of the growing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic, the number of cases declined. In the early 1990s, a new epidemic struck heterosexuals (and their newborns), primarily those who traded sex for crack cocaine. Nonetheless, by the late 1990s, the number of cases of syphilis in the United States was so low and the cases were so geographically restricted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, Ga) launched a syphilis elimination program. Because syphilis disproportionately affected African . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Author Affiliation: Departments of Neurology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases), University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Wash.