Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - October 7, 2001
Tanya Pampalone, of the Examiner Staff
In an Oct. 3 letter obtained by The Examiner and sent to the Centers for Disease Control by the Committee on Government Reform, information was requested regarding CDC involvement in discussions with the health department's director of STD Prevention and Control Services, Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, and AOL, which is based in Virginia.
The letter written by congressional aide Roland Foster asserts Klausner made calls to Virginia health officials to urge them to use their "public health powers" to shut down the AOL gay men's chat room SF M4M.
Since January, Klausner has asked AOL to post messages to warn users of a sharp increase in syphilis cases in San Francisco, particularly among men who met through the chat room.
Klausner contacted health departments across the country to find out if they had a high rate of syphilis cases associated with meetings in chat rooms. At least 10 of the 65 regions indicated they had a similar problem.
According to Klausner, from January 2000 through August 2001, there were 121 early cases of syphilis reported in gay men and 19 percent of them met partners on the Internet. He said for 2001, 13 men had met on the Internet and of those, seven met on AOL's SF M4M chat room site. He said the syphilis rates nearly doubled since the late 90s.
But Klausner denies that his intention was to shut them down.
"Closing (chat rooms) pushes the population down to places where we can't access them," he said, adding that they provide an educational vehicle for STD information.
In Virginia, they had no indication that the chat rooms were involved in disease transmission, according to Casey Riley, director of the division of HIV, STD and Hepatitis for the Virginia Health Department.
Riley said he spoke with Klausner, but declined to put pressure on AOL to post information because he didn't think it was a problem for his state.
"What he wanted was for us to get involved in getting AOL to consider putting information on there," Riley said, but he was unsure of what he could offer the San Francisco health official.
In the letter to the CDC, the House staffer asked whether the agency had addressed the issue of online HIV prevention with San Francisco authorities in regards to The City's "own publically-funded HIV educators who advertise themselves online for sex without condoms."
In August, the New York Times reported that Department of Public Health employee Seth Watkins cruises on the Internet and admitted that when he visits a Folsom Street bar he has unprotected sex with men he does not know.
"You have San Francisco health officials engaging in unsafe sex and giving interviews to newspapers saying they are soliciting sex online," said one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Why are they harassing Virginia while their own employees are engaging in the kind of behavior that they are trying to stop?"
While Klausner refused to comment on the sexual behavior of DPH employees, he may have made headway on his campaign to get AOL to post STD warnings in chat rooms.
After months of no replies, Richard Socarides, AOL Time Warner vice president of corporate relations, sent a letter dated Oct. 4, acknowledging Klausner's requests.
America Online said it would provide the DPH staff with complimentary AOL accounts to address the issue and indicated that the Internet provider was in discussions with the CDC to obtain and place educational material "on appropriate areas of the service."
AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said the plan is part of an ongoing effort to help support educational health campaigns and not a direct response to Klausner's efforts.
Not so, said Klausner.
"To say this is an ongoing project is misleading because they have not done anything," he said. "They certainly have not done anything effective if syphilis continues to be associated with (AOL chat rooms)."
E-mail Tanya Pampalone at tpampalone@sfexaminer.com
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