WASHINGTON, D.C.- It was touch and go there for a while, a real nail biter right up to the finish. Syphilis cases rose sharply last year. Gonorrhea made a dramatic surge later in the summer, and for a time it was anyone's game. As medical researchers tallied the final numbers earlier this week, the results were so close that in the end chlamydia won by a pustule. The humble bacterial infection that nobody seemed to believe had a chance just a few months ago has become this year's #1 sexually transmitted disease.

According to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there will not be an official ceremony to crown America's favorite form of VD, but sources have confirmed that a portrait of the organism will grace the cover of this month's "Sexiest Infection Alive" issue of Pathology Monthly.

After playing second-fiddle to Gonorrhea most of the past half century, chlamydia's amazing upset is certainly welcome news for sufferers. A distinction like this is bound to add to the disease's cachet.

"I guess if I had to have a painful and potentially deadly venereal disease, I would probably choose chlamydia," said one local college student. "Sure, there are more poignant ailments out there like syphilis or AIDS, but with chlamydia you get to be part of something bigger. You get to be number one, and everybody loves a winner. Plus, it would prove that I've had sex at least once, and that would be kinda cool."

Even more amazing, this is a victory that almost never happened at all. Sexually-transmitted diseases in general had been on the decline during the 1990's, and some feared that safe sex practices might eradicate many of these pesky social diseases altogether. Thankfully, all that changed a few years ago thanks to the hard work of thousands of people and a little something called abstinence-only sex education. The idea behind it is brilliantly simple: as long as young people understand that sex is bad, very bad, they don't have to learn anything at all about how to protect themselves in case they happen to have sex since, as mentioned previously, they would all know all about how such behavior is very, very bad. So, when they wind up down at the local free clinic with drippy, splotchy private parts they can thank their benevolent God and wise President for supporting a staunch pro-crotch-rot agenda, thus allowing diseases like chlamydia to come roaring back and making them part of a winning team.

"Well, the disease has left me sexually incapacitated and horribly disfigured, but the fact that we're finally number one kind of makes all that seem worthwhile," said long-time chlamydia sufferer Alan Coholic. "Now I can tell myself that I'm deathly ill and half-blind for a reason. Among the chlamydia community, news of the CDC's study has been a real shot in the arm Not the penicillin kind, though, more like a morale boost. If it were a shot of antibiotics we might be cured, and we wouldn't have been a part of this remarkable achievement."