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Show Faith Plus Science Needed Newsweek's feature story on America's Venereal Disease epidemic (Jan 24) suggests almost every possible pos-sible way of stopping the spread of venereal disease, except morality and faith in God. The Newsweek story does not indict the promiscuity promis-cuity responsible for syphilis and gonorrhea. Newsweek News-week merely reports that these infectious diseases are outranked in incidence only by the common cold. VD is now first among the so-called reportable diseases. disea-ses. The number of cases each year exceeds those of strep throat, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, hepatitis hepati-tis and tuberculosis combined. This year there will be more than 2 million new cases of gonorrhea. The national case rate is ten times higher than that of France, well over twice that of Britain. What makes the horrendous VD epidemic hard to comprehend for Newsweek is that these diseases "can be cured with penicillin and other antibiotics." The Newsweek writers are virtually stunned with disbelief that science could possibly let them down; that science could be stymied by the new freedoms of the sexual revolution. Newsweek studiously avoids interpreting this epidemic in terms of a moral breakdown, of a failure i to live according to the Ten Commandments. Nature Na-ture has its laws and sanctions. Fire will burn you. Ice will freeze you. Promiscuity will infect you. The article admits that syphilis when untreated can lead to insanity and death. However, it would seem to be against the magazine's taboos to reprehend the behavior be-havior that causes syphilis. The moral teaching of the Jewish and Chris-, Chris-, tian faiths, when observed, is the solution to this epidemic. Observance of these teachings is still far more effective than science for putting an end to VD, because it prevents its cause. Faith is the ounce of prevention work more than that pound of scientific scien-tific cure. The VD epidemic will continue until this is realized. |