China’s Latest Pandemic: The Clap

The Economist has a very interesting report on the subject:

In China the chance of catching it is now more than 28 times greater than it was in 1993. Syphilis cases are increasing in many countries but the extent of China’s rise, in relative and absolute terms, dwarfs figures from America, Canada and Europe. That is the conclusion of a study by Zhi-Qiang Chen and his colleagues at China’s National Centre for STD and Leprosy Control published in the latest issue of the Lancet, a medical journal. Both the broader implications of the increase, and its details, are troubling.

At the risk of making light of something that’s obviously painful for those affected, it’s not often that one article brings to mind two songs from one album.  If you’re interested in the demographics of China’s birth control issues, here’s a third.