There's a new virus in cyberspace. Actually, it's an old virus with an apparent new temporary home - online.
If your mother ever told you you'd get VD from all that hot chat on the Internet, you may have laughed but Mom has ammunition for the prosecution - a syphilis outbreak in the Bay Area which is being traced to an America Online chat room.
Putting a new and peculiar spin on computer viruses, the director of the sexually transmitted disease unit at San Francisco's Health Department says investigators questioning the last seven homosexual men reporting syphilis were "surprised to find" all seven made their most recent liaisons by way of SFM4M (San Francisco Men-For-Men), an AOL chat room.
Jeffrey Klausner says venereal diseases can boost vulnerability to HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.
But how do you fight a cyberspace health threat in a chat room where anonymity is the usual rule and people are known by online nicknames or handles only?
AOL would only put health officials in touch with PlanetOut, an online gay and lesbian community, while refusing to alter its privacy policy even in this instance.
Reports indicate PlanetOut spent two weeks visiting the chat room and warning its users about the syphilis outbreak, urging them to take tests and practice safe sex.
Klausner says future public health campaigns would take into account the growing role played by the Internet in human interaction and relationships. As he told the San Francisco Examiner Monday, "We've learned that Internet contacts are an important sexual network."
