Why does it hurt when I pee?

In the age of incurable STDs, gonorrhea has been seen as no big deal. However...

The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea is now among the "superbugs" resistant to common antibiotics, leading US health officials to recommend wider use of a different class of drugs to avert a public health crisis. The resistant form accounts for more than one in every four gonorrhoea cases among heterosexual men in Philadelphia and nearly that many in San Francisco, according to a survey that led to Thursday's recommendation by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Gonorrhoea, which is believed to infect more than 700,000 people in the United States each year, can leave both men and women infertile and puts people at higher risk of getting the AIDS virus.

Oral flouroquinolones, such as Cipro, have been the main treatment for gonorrhea, but now the CDC recommends doctors use the less common cephalosporins, which must be injected. Gonorrhea had already developed resistance to sulfa drugs, then penicillin, then the tetracyclines.

"That leaves us with a single class of highly effective antibiotics," said Dr John Douglas Jr, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention. Other experts called the situation perilous. "We are running out of options to treat this disease," added Douglas, who said there are "no new drugs for gonorrhea in the drug development pipeline."

Good luck, youngsters.