TREATMENT FOR VENEREAL DISEASE
SIR,—I was astonished and shocked by your paragraph in " Notes of the Week," November 13th, welcoming the Regulation 33b on venereal disease, and I was further surprised that in the issue of November loth no protests against it were printed. The regulation is a reversal of the present policy—recently extolled in a broadcast by Sir Wilson Jameson— of free, voluntary and confidential treatment under which this country had, before 1939, a steadily reduced number of infections and a record better than almost any country where regulation or compulsory treatment was in force.
War has always brought an increase of venereal diseases, but even in 1916, in the midst of war, the Royal Commission on the subject reported against any measures of compulsion, and the attempt to impose them in 1920 was soon abandoned, as the measures proved to be useless. 33b, like other such regulations, will bring many evils in its train and is very unlikely to lead to any diminution in the number of cases. It will rather cause a false sense of security for promiscuous intercourse. It will create a privileged class of informers who; though known to be diseased and a source of danger to others, need not submit to treatment, and another class of " suspects " who, though not known to be infected, must submit to examination, and to compulsory treatment if found to be infected. Other likely consequences are inequalities between men and women and between rich and poor, and there is the possibility of false accusations and of blackmail.
Medical opinion seems to be much divided on the whole subject, and until there is more approach to unanimity it seems a great mistake to go against the judgement of many experienced persons who have studied it from medical and moral standpoints. Surely what is needed is not com- pulsory treatment, with all its dangers, but more education on the risks of promiscuous intercourse and the need for self-control, together with easily available curative treatment for those infected.—I am, yours faith-
Previous page
