Experts: Deadly meningitis among gay men not an epidemic

The death Saturday of a California gay man who had contacted a lethal strain of bacterial meningitis follows the deaths of seven gay men who were killed by the disease in New York, but health experts said the disease is not transmitted mainly through sexual contact. 

"It's spread by respiratory droplets, which means you can be sitting and having a prolonged conversation with somebody and spread the disease without having sex," said Dr. Parveen Kaur of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Still, LGBT leaders say governments should make a vaccine effective against the disease readily available to gay men who want it, citing lessons learned from an initially slow response to the HIV-AIDS epidemic.