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In an editorial encouraging African Americans to get tested for herpes the Chicago Sun-Times links three well known celebrities to the disease. Remember this is a major daily newspaper, not TMZ! This really bothers me, does it bother anyone else?

A silent epidemic

August 31, 2007
If you're black, you have a 40 percent chance of having genital herpes. That statistic, while eye-opening, is not as shocking as it would have been before we became fixated on sexually transmitted diseases that could do more than cause painful, itchy blisters -- and before Eddie Murphy took the starch out of our fears by hilariously faking a case of herpes simplex 10 in the 1984 comedy "Beverly Hills Cop." Over the years, many celebrities have been linked with herpes without suffering any image problems, including Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt -- and Bill Clinton.

Still, the fact that such a large percentage of African Americans have genital herpes -- compared with 17 percent of the American adult population as a whole and 12 percent for Mexican Americans -- is remarkable. While herpes is not life-threatening, it is contagious. And it is incurable. The fact that so few African Americans know they have it, or choose not to let their partners know, doesn't bode well for efforts to take control of the disease in the black community. That's certainly no laughing matter.

Nor is the fact that herpes can have "serious outcomes," according to Jennifer Ruth of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to the painful, recurring sores and blisters it produces, on the lips and genitalia, it can be fatal in babies. And it can increase the risk of HIV transmission. The fact that many of those who have genital herpes suffer from outbreaks only once a year results in less worry about dating people without the disease -- or at least people they think don't have it.
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http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/536261,CST-EDT-edits31b.article