The soldier's VD problem is like the merchant sailors, exaggerated by the even greater need for release when opportunity offers, as well as by pressures of another kind: from his buddies, to "be a man" from his situation, which makes his life forfeit anyway. In modern armies he has the advantages of efficient medical care. In Vietnam the gonococcus counters with advantages of its own.

Some comments on prostitution are in order here because of the obviously great importance of the practice in the spread of VD, and of the evident need to control or eliminate one in order to do the same for the other. But it is easy to oversimplify this relationship, and difficult to speak of it without moralizing.

Prostitution is usually defined as promiscuous sex activity that is paid for or practiced as a means of livelihood. Both elements, the economic and the fact of promiscuity, contribute their share to the VD problem, the first by sustaining it, the second as the means whereby infection is introduced into the population. Or to put the matter in different words, promiscuity starts the mischief and money keeps it going. If a mistress or a gigolo were as faithful as a wife or a husband, he or she would contribute little to the VD problem: money alone, in short, is not enough. Conversely, the "amateur" the unpaid casual mate can spread as much disease without financial catalysis as the professional. Let us recognize that both prostitutes and promiscuous amateurs can be of either sex; it is only because most of the literature is written by men that it tends to concentrate on women. The male prostitute, usually a passive homosexual, has been the subject of a considerable literature in recent years. But he is mentioned by Juvenal in the poet's sixth satire. If there, is anything new about any aspect of this part of our problem it is a matter of its visibility. (see SPECIFIC SOCIAL FACTORS IN THE VD PROBLEM PART IV)