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. The Chinese claim includes both gonorrhea and syphilis and cries for impartial assessment. With more and more countries of the Western bloc establishing diplomatic relations with China it may not be long before we have the truth, whatever it turns out to be. But even if their claim proves true we could hardly follow their example. If both claims are true, they tell us mainly that the problem can be solved. If there are two ways of solving it, there are doubtless more. To know beyond a reasonable doubt that the job has been done is to know that it can be done, and to stimulate us, or even to shame us, into doing it ourselves.

Nobody is closer to the control problem in the United States than the people at the Venereal Disease Branch of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, part of the U.S. Public Health Service. Having written the preceding chapters of this book, I went to Atlanta and spent a few pleasant hours there with Dr. William J. Brown, chief of the Branch, and some of his lieutenants. The territory is familiar. A few years back I was a grantee of the VD Branch, having been one of many (the list includes some distinguished names) who tried and failed to grow cultures of Treponema pallidum. The group was gracious in giving me all I asked for in the way of stimulation toward writing this Conclusion.

All scientists know that face to face talk with colleagues generates something more than one can get either from reading or from one's own experience in laboratory and field. What does the immediate future hold in terms of research developments? More generally, how does it feel to be working on a problem that keeps getting worse, and that is widely thought of as the dirtiest subject of them all? And most important, what is their current opinion on the core question of control? (see TWO CLAIMS OF VD CONTROL PART II)