Two weeks ago the Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM) website issued an Early-Release Article highlighting a study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), regarding a particular strain of CR-MRSA infection (USA300) in communities of men who have sex with other men. That study led to a storm of headlines around the world declaring the disease the “new HIV” and that it was being spread by gay sex into the general population.

In order to publicize the study’s findings, UCSF had issued a press release, and arranged for Binh Diep, PhD, the study’s lead author, to be interviewed by Reuters, a market data and news service provider to newspapers and broadcasters around the world. The Reuters headline read as follows: Drug-resistant staph passed in gay sex –US study. The article stated that “(a) drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said.” It also quotes Diep as saying that “(o)nce this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable.”

This report on the staph infection, better known by the public as the “flesh-eating” bacteria, quickly led to alarmist reporting in much of the traditional media, including the front page of Metro, one of the UK’s most widely read tabloids, which covered most of its front page with the headline Strain of superbug ‘may be new HIV.’ It warned of “a deadly new drug-resistant strain of the superbug MRSA” and that “(t)he infection is already moving through parts of San Francisco in the same way as HIV and Aids did in the early 1980s.”

The headline at The Daily Telegraph, the UK’s highest selling newspaper, warned “Flesh-eating” MRSA threatens Britain. The paper also quoted Dr. Diep’s warning that “(o)nce this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable.” The Australian, Australia’s only daily national newspaper, led with: Flesh-eating bug spreads among gays.

Much of the North American media coverage fared little better. The New York Times coverage opened with a warning that “(a) new, highly drug-resistant strain of the “flesh-eating” MRSA bacteria is being spread among gay men” and stated that “the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse but also through casual skin-to-skin contact and touching contaminated surfaces.” The former assertion was never addressed, much less confirmed by the study.

The Boston Globe simply used the Reuters piece to publish the same wrong information about MRSA leaving the borders of US hospitals via gay sex. The Globe also used Dr. Diep’s go-to quote as did the The Toronto Star, Canada’s highest circulation newspaper.

Even some of the gay media got it wrong. Citing the aforementioned article in the NYT as its source, The Advocate’s online news site referred to a new “flesh-eating” bacteria spreading quickly among gay men that could pose a “wider threat.” While the NYT incorrectly reported of a possible relationship between anal sex and USA300 transmission, The Advocate upped the error/alarm factor by stating it as a fact.

With regard to the study published in AIM, William F. Owen M.D., a leading authority on HIV/AIDS, and one of the Bay Area’s most recognized primary care physicians told the Bay Area Reporter, “I really don’t even think it’s news.”

The outcry from gay groups led the researchers who first published the study to issue an apology, but by then the damage had been done. Not only had millions of newspaper readers and television viewers had the words “gay sex” and “flesh-eating” bacteria linked in their minds, but gay demagogues like Peter LaBarbera, Joseph Farrah, and Matt Barber, just to name three of the usual suspects, dusted off their old scripts to try to politicize MRSA and use it as a weapon against gay men.

LaBarbera and Farrah linked MRSA to AIDS, while Barber’s press release said “(t)he human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.”