Certain things happen in syphilis that are explained by most experts in terms of immunity, although others, accepting the facts, explain them in different terms and argue that there is no true immunity to this disease. The argument has been going on since the prebacteriologic era and has never been completely resolved.

More work is going into a syphilis vaccine than into one against gonorrhea, but, as Dr. John Knox put it in 1969, "more money is being spent to eliminate athlete's foot than syphilis." The technical difficulties are not the same as for gonorrhea.

The possibility of a vaccine for gonorrhea is nevertheless being explored especially recently, as the statistics have been mounting alarmingly. The same kind of work that is being done primarily in the hope of developing a blood test for gonorrhea also has, as a by product, the aim of producing an immunizing agent.

Cellular agents of disease, including the bacteria, are, compared with viruses and toxins, huge and chemically extremely complex. When the whole cell, killed or otherwise made harmless, is injected as a vaccine, the antibodies formed against the mass of antigenic material hardly ever kill or inactivate living virulent cells.

Vaccines contain antigenic materials; they stimulate the production by the body of antibodies that react specifically with the antigens. If the antibody is to be effective in preventing disease, it must match a particular antigenic component of the disease agent which is responsible for the symptoms.

The development of effective vaccines holds out the most immediate hope for the future to the scientist whose job it is to discover new knowledge about VD, who has accepted the fact of failure of control by all means now available, and who feels incapable of dealing with the "social factors," whose importance he fully recognizes.

Why does she (or he) run away? Why do they not come in for diagnosis and treatment in the first place? Why all the elaborate detective work of the blitz, the searching out of patients and contacts, the cajolery, the specially trained investigators? The questions almost seem to answer themselves, and a good deal of the answer is so obvious that we needn't waste time on it.

Clearly, professional promiscuity is not disappearing. But Lancereaux's idea that VD could be controlled if we were to "meet the evil at its source, that is, in the houses of prostitution" must have been as much of an oversimplification in his time as it is today. Nor is amateur promiscuity a new phenomenon, as many alarmists would have us believe.

By February, 1969, the operation had apparently become so scandalous or could the media merely have discovered something they considered spectacular? that a six part TV report was broadcast. The TV report, according to Jack Gould in the New York Times of February 26, 1969 said, “There were 25,000 prostitutes in New York and that the lenient 15 day sentence for conviction had led to an invasion of the city by girls from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii.”

As for homosexual practices, aside from their lack of novelty, there are two particular features that show up in the literature. It is male relationships rather than female that tend to be promiscuous (lesbians generally pair off in what amounts to marriage without legal sanction, and tend to maintain stable relationships; but men usually do not); accordingly, it is the male rather than the female homosexual who is significant in the VD problem.