The Price of Gonorrhea

Gonorrhea results from infection by Neisseria gonorrhoeae, also called gonococcus, a microscopic organism that frequently lodges in the mucous membranes of the reproductive organs. It, too, is highly contagious, and, as with syphilis, gonorrhea may display no symptoms. There are now thought to be 800,000 females in the United States unknowingly carrying gonorrhea.

For those who do show symptoms, early evidence of gonorrhea may be painful urination or a discharge of pus from the genital organ. In males, gonorrhea affects the urethra, the canal that transports the urine from the bladder out of the body. Gonorrhea also involves sacs that store sperm and can, therefore, lead to sterility.

In females, this disease often produces a large painful abscess near the opening of the vagina. Gonorrhea spreads to the uterine tubes and, here too, can lead to sterility. During a recent year, in just one country, more than 100,000 hysterectomies were performed for conditions directly related to gonorrhea. And it can also result in blindness, heart disease and crippling arthritis. Do you feel that a few minutes of sexual pleasure are worth the high price of gonorrhea?

Of course, many feel that gonorrhea is easy to get rid of. Just a shot of penicillin, they think, and everything is all right. To such persons, Dr. Harold T. Hyman sounds a serious warning:

“Smart alecks of both sexes and of any age do not realize that gonorrhea can no longer be prevented or cured with certainty by sulfa pills that used to be 100% effective. Many strains of gonococci have become ‘fast,’ meaning that they are now resistant to the sulfas and/​or to penicillin. Self-treatments may merely mask the infection and result in later transmission to coital partners of a ‘treatment resistant’ strain of gonococci.”

Gonorrhea, though it is not passed on during pregnancy, may infect the infant as it passes through the birth canal. This can cause the newborn to develop severe inflammation of one or both eyes and of the delicate membrane that lines the eyelids.