Medicine: Chlamydia: the Silent Epidemic

Which of the following is the most common venereal disease in the U.S.: 1) * syphilis, 2) gonorrhea, 3) herpes? Answer: none of the above. In fact, the most prevalent of all sexually transmitted diseases is one that few people have ever heard of: chlamydia. This disease, named for the tiny bacterium (Chlamydia trachomatis) that causes it, strikes between 3 million and 10 million Americans each year. The bug is also a hidden agent in as many as one out of every two cases of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), a painful, sometimes sterilizing infection that affects about 1 million American women...