More than simply a medical story, herpes, the venereal disease for which there is no cure to date, is a subject of staggering dimensions. Its spread throughout the U.S. is a serious, wholly unanticipated consequence of the sexual revolution. The extent to which this so-called social disease has infected, in many more ways than are obvious, the life of a growing number of Americans became apparent when TIME'S bureaus were asked to make an initial assessment of the importance of the story.

Their responses were blunt. As Atlanta Bureau Reporter Joyce Leviton discovered, "Almost every sexually active young person I spoke with either has the disease or knows someone who has it." Los Angeles Bureau Reporter Cheryl Crooks found that "in talking with herpes sufferers, I realized how little accurate medical information they had about their own disease." Part of the herpes problem today is that discussion of the phenomenon sometimes seems almost as off-putting as the disease itself. A TIME reporter in the South had to fight the reluctance of conservative Western Union operators in Mississippi to transmit her reports. They said they found the material distasteful. Indeed, the transmission of the files was delayed until the arrival of a younger telex operator, to whom the reporting seemed neither repugnant nor shocking. Art Director Rudy Hoglund noticed the reluctance of some professional models, worried about their image, to pose for TIME'S cover--normally not the kind of booking New York City models spurn. They feared that readers, after seeing them in the magazine, might deduce that they themselves suffered from the disease.

The cover story was written by Associate Editor John Leo, while Staff Writer Claudia Wallis summed up the medical aspects of herpes and possible cures. Both stories were edited by William F. Ewald and checked for factual accuracy by Reporter-Researcher Nancy Pierce Williamson. As Wallis concludes, "Herpes is insidious, but it doesn't have to be a tragedy." The potential tragedy would be a continuing and pervasive public ignorance of what herpes is and how its estimated 20 million sufferers in the U.S. should react to it.

John A. Meyers

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