The Nation - News from June 29, 1989

More than two-thirds of all blacks in the United States have genital herpes by the time they reach 50 and more than a third of all upper middle-class white women are infected without even knowing it, a doctor with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said. Dr. Ward Cates said up to 30 million Americans--about 16% of the population--are infected with the sexually transmitted virus but only about a third of those infected develop symptoms. Cates, director of the CDC’s division of sexually transmitted diseases, revealed the study findings to a CDC advisory committee during a meeting in Atlanta. The study, conducted jointly by the CDC and Emory University, will be published in the July 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.