Rate of VD at Harvard Below National Average

The number of venereal disease cases treated at the University Health Services (UHS) remains at a low, stable figure, even though the national incidence of venereal disease has more than doubled during the past ten years.

UHS treats only a handful of syphilis cases annually. "With gonorrhea, and a 30,000 patient population, the rate is very low but not infinitesimal," said Dr. Preston K. Munter, assistant director of UHS. "We get only 50 to 60 cases a year, in spite of what seems to be going on in the population at large."

Munter hypothesized that the Harvard community has a low, stable venereal disease rate "because people in this community are a little more knowledgeable, a little more careful, hopefully."

Dr. Curtis Prout, associate director of the UHS, said, "It has been a social class disease to a certain extent. In my day, nobody went to bed with a 'nice girl.'" But today, he said, "prostitutes complain that they are being put out of business by amateurs."

In curing venereal disease, gonorrhea in the female is the biggest clinical worry, according to both Dr. Prout and Dr. Nicholas J. Fiumara, director of the Massachusetts Division of Communicable and Venereal Diseases.

There are 20 cases of gonorrhea for each case of syphilis. Although men inevitably have a discharge and a sore if stricken by gonorrhea, two thirds of the female gonorrhea cases are asyptomatic. Fiumara, who is also a clinical instructor in dermatology at the Medical School, said, "The poor female doesn't know she has it unless the male tells her he's been exposed."

He explained that this is the major

reason why "gonorrhea has become an epidemic in the United States. We estimate one and one-half million new cases of gonorrhea annually."

The birth control pill, he said, "has hurt us in the area of VD. The pill increases moisture in the vaginal track and changes the pH of the vaginal floor from acid, which is normal, to alkaline, which is abnormal. The gonorrhea organism thrives in an alkaline medium."

"If she uses no contraceptive, her chances of getting VD from an infected male would be 40 per cent," Fiumara said. "Today with the pill, her chances of getting infected are practically 100 per cent."

Fiumara said that the jellies used with diaphragms have no acid pH and can sometimes act as chemical barriers to gonorrhea.