Public health officials across the West Coast are urging medical professionals to look out for cases of ocular syphilis – a sexually transmitted disease that can cause blindness – after two potential cases in Los Angeles recently.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued an advisory for primary and eye-care providers to look out for symptoms associated with the disease, which is usually a complication of primary or secondary syphilis infections.
ith more than a dozen cases – most of them among gay men – reported between Seattle and San Francisco and now potentially two in Southern California, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is calling for medical professionals to do more.
“These new cases … highlight the importance of ongoing, regular check-ups for sexually active individuals who feel they may be at risk, particularly men who have sex with men,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein in a statement.
Some of the patients also are HIV positive, including six in San Francisco. In Seattle, two of the patients went blind.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California’s syphilis rate was second in the country behind only Georgia. Los Angeles also had the highest number of primary and secondary cases of syphilis of any county in the U.S. in 2013, the CDC reported.
Here are some of the comments posted on LATimes.com. It seems we have a long way to go in overcoming homophobia:
* Remember how the media lied to us when AIDS first started killing gay men in the 1980’s, telling us that a heterosexual epidemic was also occurring? Why would they do that? Because they feared that if AIDS was considered just a “Gay Disease” they could not secure billions and billions of dollars in funding to research a cure. This lie worked, they got all the AIDS funding they could ever hope for. But it didn’t change reality – to get AIDS you had to either: engage in unprotected anal sex; share a dirty needle with an HIV infected drug user; or get a tainted blood transfusion. Those three methods of infection still account for 99% of all new HIV infections.
And now there is a strain of syphilis causing blindness in gay men – because most gays don’t like wearing a condom. I look at this as Darwin at work – weeding out people who cannot control themselves from engaging in high risk sexual behavior. Wouldn’t you wear a condom all the time if you are having anal sex? I am not gay, but I know I sure as hell would not gamble my life by not wearing a condom.
* The first symptom of ocular syphilis is a pounding sensation in your ass.
* Is this the LOVE Jeb Bush was talking about coming over the border from Metzico?
* Yellow fever, measles, whooping cough, polio, plague, leprosy, now ocular syphilis? Nothing more than the wages of totally uncontrolled illegal immigration. Enjoy it California. You’re the one’s that welcomed it with open arms. Now live with it.
* I have a hard time keeping up with all the plagues CA has been experiencing. Jerry Brown should start praying again.
* GOD is not mad at gays – GOD does not hate gays or lesbians or whatever BUT if you keep playing with fire (aids and all of these wonderful sexual diseases) DONT BE SURPRISED when you actually are struck down by these diseases.
so simply put STOP banging each other in the keister and you might not get aids or this new disease..
And STOP demanding doctors come up with a cure since you cant seem to keep your wang in your pants.
* I could not care less if every gay in America goes blind.
* And pray tell, which vector threat is responsible for this latest emerging epidemic…. OH, OH, wait, wait for it, no it can’t be, no not THEM again:
“..most of them among gay men – reported between Seattle and San Francisco and now potentially two in Southern California…. “..particularly men who have sex with men!”
As the Emperor Joseph II in the movie Amadeus remarked: “Well, there it is..” Too bad for society that they have no logic and common sense to the threat!
* Funny how many new disease problems originate in LA. Couldn’t possibly be because of illegal immigrants though, right?
* So the possibility that a newly arrived illegal carried the strain (a disease that came out of nowhere and has appeared in several west coast locations had to come from somewhere), and since the gay community likes interracial relationships particularly with minorities, cannot both be factors?
* You know, this wouldn’t be a problem if people with communicable diseases were quarantined like was done years ago.
* And how many homosexuals do you suppose know they are harbingers of certain death as HIV/AIDS carriers? So now we should again excuse their bio-hazard lifestyle to spreading their new plague, the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum, a.k.a. syphilis! Syphilis will eventually morph into neurosyphilis and if not responsive to treatment your brain basically turns into runny snot!
Syphilis infected 12 million people worldwide in 1999 alone, with greater than 90% of cases in the developing world. “This [is] attributed partly to increased promiscuity, prostitution, decreasing use of condoms, AND UNSAFE SEXUAL PRACTICES AMONG MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MEN”!
So, hit that “Grindr” app and find that ‘special’ BFF (Best Fatal Friend!)
Oh yeah, there is no vaccine available!
