"Shameless, Sinful"

The War Advertising Council last fortnight withdrew its support from Surgeon General Thomas Parran's campaign against venereal disease. The council is a nonprofit organization of advertising men which prepares the publicity and posters for such drives as WAC recruiting and war bonds. It helped the venereal disease cam paign at the request of OWI and the U.S. Public Health Service. It stopped cooperating at the request of conservative groups of Roman Catholics. (Surgeon General Parran is himself a Catholic.)

A Question of Morals. The council first got complaints last summer, when it issued a set of advertisements and posters showing people facing the problems of venereal disease -- "VD" in the posters. Sample captions: "How does your daughter pronounce syphilis, gonorrhea? That's easy. She doesn't." "Science Says VD Can Be Cured." "Hiding VD Is Foolish." Moral aspects were scarcely mentioned.

The idea was that national advertisers would support the VD campaign just as they had the war bond drives and WAC recruiting.

The campaigners thought their advertising would not offend the only big organization that might object -- the Roman Catholic Church -- because: 1) an intensified local campaign along the same lines had stirred no protests in the intensely Catholic New Orleans area; and 2) the advertising had been approved by an interdenominational advisory committee. But objections soon poured in from such conservative Catholic sources as the 50,000 New York State Knights of Columbus and the 51,000 New York and New Jersey Catholic War Veterans. Sample complaint: "We should seek to promote morality and clean living rather than the open and shameless discussion of the checking of diseases contracted through sinful practices." The War Advertising Council gave up, announced that it would not urge advertisers to cooperate.

A Question of Health. Nevertheless, the Surgeon General's campaign went on. The War Advertising Council's prepared advertisements may still be used--in local if not national publicity. Declared Surgeon General Parran: "These educational efforts have been increasingly successful. Reversing all previous wartime experience, present infection rates in the United States are at an alltime low."

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