I promise honey- I really do have a STD!!

February 28th, 2007 · 1 Comment

To the wife: Breath.. It’s a CNN story..

An amazing story on CNN details the emergence of online networks- dating services that cater specifically to people that have STD’s… A nice idea from a social standpoint- but terrible when thinking abotu the biology and genetics of disease- especially viral diseases.. Think parasite variability and genetic reassortment.. I’ll have to write more about this later.

And the growing number of people in similar situations has created a new industry: Internet dating sites just for people with STDs. From stdmatch.net to datingwithherpes.com, Web sites abound for the infected who want to date the infected.
It’s not surprising once you see the numbers. One in four women is infected with genital herpes, and nearly one in five men according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And a study in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association finds that one in four women has human papillomavirus, which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer.(Interactive: Test your STD knowledge)

Once John got over the initial shock of his diagnosis, one of the first things he did was go online.

“I went on Craig’s List and posted a note that said, ‘I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I’m a decent professional man, and I’ve ended up with this.’ Someone then contacted me and said, ‘Have you heard of Charlotteh?’”

Once John joined Charlotteh.com - part support group, part dating site for people with herpes - everything changed. “I would have been happy to have had just one person to unload everything I was feeling,” he says. “Instead I found more than 500.”