On a cold December afternoon, a select group of 30 AIDS activists, scientists, physicians and journalists, armed with stacks of scientific papers and medical textbooks, gathers in the plush boardroom of a Manhattan ad agency to discuss some highly controversial findings that threaten to alter fundamentally the direction of AIDS research. The meeting, organized by two New York AIDS groups, is opened by Joan McKenna, a San Francisco researcher who was among the first to draw attention to this issue. Syphilis search Syphilis, transmitted through intimate sexual contact, is commonly thought easy to diagnose and treat. The initial phase can produce a sore called a chancre.
Secondary syphilis can result in rashes, fevers and sore throat.
These symptoms may go unnoticed, however, and the disease can then lie dormant in a chronic, latent state. All the same, this uncanny overlap with AIDS symptoms intrigues John Scythes. The classical literature has reference after reference to AIDS-like deaths from lymphomas, cancers, Kaposi's sarcoma, pneumonias and tuberculosis in populations known to be suffering from inadequately or untreated chronic syphilis, yet we ignore that in the AIDS era. His crusade to shed light on this issue has put him in touch with many of the world's leading syphilis experts and has taken him to over a dozen medical conferences, including this latest meeting, where he's been invited to make a presentation. Immunologist Doug MacFadden, who heads the HIV clinic at Toronto Western Hospital, has also been looking into the behaviour of syphilis in the AIDS era.