A new understanding of why some people get sick when exposed to germs while others remain healthy is radically revising the popular concept of what causes illness. How resistant we are to. the microbes in our lives is a function of how well we are coping, which in turn depends largely on how we look at problems our "cognitive appraisal" and the chemical changes that our thoughts produce in our brains and bodies.

Cancer is an example. Although claims are made yearly that the cure rate is steadily improving, people with the leading kinds of cancer are no more likely to survive than they were a generation ago. Deaths from cancer continue to rise yearly in the United States, even though we have spent about $18.5 billion on research since the national Cancer Act of 1971 was passed and "the war on cancer" declared. By comparison, it cost about $10 billion to develop and launch the first space shuttle.

VD people do not forget that syphilis has a proud tradition as a subject of research and a field of medicine and public health. There is something here to counterbalance the low esteem in which VD has been held in other quarters through the ages.

Gonorrhea lacks the peculiar immunity problem of the treponematoses, and for the present at least there is no threat that a vaccine would interfere with diagnosis of gonorrhea as it probably would with syphilis. This problem may arise if a blood test for gonorrhea comes into use, but it is not likely to be the same as in syphilis...

The new statistics emphasized that gonorrhea is now the paramount VD problem, but that syphilis has moved up from fourth place to third among reportable diseases; that the increase in VD in the last few years has shown up in all age groups and is not primarily in teenagers or other young people...

Two CLAIMS of VD control have been described in these pages, one in an Alabama prison and one in China. The first is probably acceptable at face value but doesn't help us much. It related only to syphilis, and we could hardly think of applying the methods used to the whole population.

Both Edgar Snow and Felix Greene, American and Canadian observers respectively, speak of the sex practices of the Chinese and the attitudes they reflect. There is, on the one hand, a new equality of women, and on the other, a discouragement of premarital or extramarital sex.

Additional information comes from sources that are likely to be trustworthy, especially since different observers are in pretty good agreement. For example, a report datelined March 2, 1969, by the Canadian journalist Colin McCullough, tells us that in 1949 there were eight medical schools in all of China, and only 20,000 doctors trained in Western medicine.

When he returned from a visit to North Vietnam in June, 1969, Henrik Beer, Secretary General of the League of Red Cross Societies with headquarters in Geneva, was reported in the press as having spoken highly of doctors and social workers there, and as having said that civilian health had improved despite wartime shortages. He spoke of measures for control of a number of epidemic diseases but said nothing of VD.

Birth control information and materials (an intrauterine device rather than pills, which were considered unsafe even in 1968) are freely available in hospitals and clinics, but there is no campaign to encourage their use. A sharp rise in the rate of infected abortions from 5.7 per 100,000 live births in 1959 to 30.7 in 1965 was explained "by a high ranking Ministry official" on the ground that during the first few years of the Castro regime...