A while back I read an article about how around the turn of the previous century a patent medicine company developed a cure for herpes. With much fanfare they put their new medication out into the market. Absolutely no-one cared. This was a hundred years ago, before indoor plumbing and antibiotics. For these folks, herpes was just a dick zit, a pussy pimple. This is a time when you could die of blood poisoning from a paper cut. When parents were told not to get too attached to their children until they were at least five. People gave absolutely zero fucks about genital acne. Not to be dissuaded the company decided to change the tone of their ad campaign. They decided on shame.
I can’t find that article, but I did find a couple of others that point to the late mid-20th century as the time when herpes went from being a minor skin irritation that you could get anywhere on your body to “genital herpes”, a horrifying and shameful affliction. So, what was happening in the 60s and 70s that would cause people to suddenly freak out about something that wasn’t even on the radar of their parents and grandparents? The sexual revolution! People had to be punished in some way for all those orgasms they were suddenly having.
The 90s had been good. Crime was falling from historic highs to historic lows. The Cold War was over. And this new thing called the Internet had everyone thinking we were in the middle of a revolution. We actually believed in and were working to manage climate change. Y2K was a bust. The disaster of the 2000 election was resolved in a mere 30 odd days. Things were looking optimistic for HIV drugs. Flare ups around the globe were on simmer. There were no ongoing major natural disasters. Big changes were happening, and they all seemed to be for the better. This was calamitous for a news media that had become addicted to an “if it bleeds, it leads” dynamic. So, the media came up with the Summer of the Shark.
Despite the fact that there were no more shark attacks on average in 2001 than in previous years and less than in 2000 shark attacks were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, the lead stories on all the networks. The media created the story they needed to sell ads. They didn’t lie. But the way they were reporting on it made it seem that the waters were literally frothing with the blood of the innocent. This is what happened with herpes.
The time between the development of oral birth control for women and the discovery of penicillin, cure of pretty much all of the common sexually transmitted infections of the era, and the AIDS pandemic of the 80s was a time of profound change in the sexuality of Americans. Particularly of American women. Between the sexual revolution and second wave feminism the role of women in our society was undergoing a major shift. Women were gaining power in our society. Herpes seemed an appropriate punishment.
While the shaming splashed liberally onto men it was women whose empowerment, sexual and otherwise, was so frightening to the establishment that were the main targets. Contagious, sometimes uncomfortable, it could literally physically mark its victims. After all, herpes could even (very rarely) kill babies! Women were putting their very (possible) children at risk in pursuit of orgasms.
So why, to this day, is a diagnosis of herpes still treated with such immense shame? In fact, the stigma is far worse than the diagnosis. It goes beyond simple embarrassment into depression, anguish, and anger. To find the answer, follow the money. In this case straight to Big Pharma and a company, then called Burroughs Wellcome Co., which designed advertisements created to build a market for herpes medication, Zovirax. This would have been bad enough if Zovirax had actually, you know, worked. But, of course, it didn’t. However, the advertising campaign sure did.
Big Pharma latched onto herpes because it is hella common. Herpes is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, oral or genital secretions and oral, vaginal and anal sex. Herpes can be transmitted when there is no lesion. Someone who is carrying the HSV-2 and has never had an outbreak is shedding virus about 10% of the time. Folks who have HSV -2 and have had an outbreak shed virus about 20% of the time when they have no lesion present. So, you can be super careful and use a condom correctly and still get herpes via unprotected oral sex or through skin contact that wasn’t covered by the condom.
Which is probably why more people have herpes than have diabetes. According to the WHO about two thirds of people under 50 are infected with herpes. That’s over 3.5 billion people. Most are exposed to type 1 in childhood, long before they are sexually active. This is because the virus is not only contagious when there is an outbreak. In fact, the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic which means people can have viral shedding and not even know about it. The point being that there were and are a lot of potential customers for a herpes medication.
However, despite all the fucking going on the rate of known herpes infections during the era went up by about two percent. Two percent. Most herpes infections are asymptomatic and, while having a cold sore on your crotch has got to be deuced uncomfortable it is not a threat to overall health in almost all circumstances. The rate of neonatal transmission is considered to be less than 2% with occurrences at around 31.2 per 100,000 (1 in 3,200) and can be prevented with medication and a C-section.
In fact, in the Vice article “Did Big Pharma Create the Herpes Stigma for Profit?” by Haley Potiker Burroughs Wellcome Co. biochemist Pedro Cuatrecasas who was involved in the development and marketing of Zovirax is quoted as saying, “During the [discovery and development] of acyclovir (Zovirax), marketing insisted that there were ‘no markets’ for this compound.” He goes on to say that at the time most folks had barely heard of herpes. Which is why the marketing department decided on shame.
Getting herpes means one thing: That you have one of the most common viruses in the human population. That’s it.
Sources
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1715020,00.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2780322/#:~:text=Prospective%2C%20single%20center%20studies%20in,(1%20in%203%2C200)%20births
https://www.salon.com/2019/02/12/how-big-pharma-helped-create-the-herpes-stigma-to-sell-drugs/
https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/genital-herpes-stigma-history-explained.html
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/153/9/912/124702
https://www.insidehook.com/article/sex-and-dating/herpes-stigma
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/human-herpes-virus-2
https://www.everydayhealth.com/herpes/emotional-side-genital-herpes/
https://hormonewellnessmd.com/womens-health/herpes-just-the-facts-hold-the-shame
https://www.bustle.com/articles/173402-8-reasons-not-to-feel-ashamed-about-having-herpes