<http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/20/na-university-backpedals-after-staph-lab
eled-new-h/>:

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SAN FRANCISCO - In a matter of days, it jumped from a routine news
release to a medical controversy.

Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of
California at San Francisco announced that gay men were "many times
more likely than others" to acquire a new strain of drug-resistant
staphylococcus, a nasty, fast-spreading and potentially lethal
bacteria known as MRSA USA300.

And sure enough, the study, published online in the Annals of Internal
Medicine, was quickly picked up by reporters around the world and
across the Internet, including a London tabloid which dubbed the
disease "the new HIV."

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
which helped finance the study, affirmed Wednesday that the disease is
not sexually transmitted or limited to a certain type of person. It is
transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, the agency said in a
statement, and is widespread in hospitals and among hospital workers.

But for gay men in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, an early
epicenter for the AIDS epidemic and a current hot spot for MRSA, the
report seemed to cast an unfair, and all too familiar, stigma on their
sexuality.

"The way they keep targeting gays as if gays alone are responsible for
it, its like HIV/AIDS all over again," said Colin Thurlow, 60. "And
we're sick and tired of it."

The report also inadvertently offered ammunition for anti-gay groups,
including the conservative Concerned Women for America, which issued a
statement Wednesday citing the "sexual deviancy" of gay men as leading
to AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea.

National gay rights groups were quick to label such talk as
"hysteria," even as researchers at the university scrambled to clarify
their findings. The school issued an apology Friday, saying the
release had "contained some information that could be interpreted as
misleading."

"We deplore negative targeting of specific populations in association
with MRSA infections or other public health concerns," it concluded.

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I'm surprised the "gay rights groups" didn't start painting signs and
planning marches for funding.  I think they missed a trick there,
especially as people are getting a bit bored with non-lethal killer
HIV.