Faces of Hepatitis STD Education Program

Faces of Hepatitis is a project of STD Carriers Disease Control and Prevention Services that started as a Study on Celebrities with STDs in which STD Carriers put together celebrity pictures of hepatitis c carriers that keep being infected year after year. The project has documented before and after photos of six celebrities so far. Those celebrities are Keith Richards, Marianne Faithful, Anita Pallenberg, David Marks, Gary S. Paxton, and Nik Cohn.

The Famous Faces of Hepatitis C

Keith Richards, Marianne Faithful, and Anita Pallenberg are all well known for their drug use during the 1960s and 1970s. It has been rumored that all three of them having Hepatitis C is more than a coincidence since all three were friends back when Keith Richards’s band The Rolling Stones was new and popular. David Marks is best known for his work on the Beach Boy, Gary S. Paxton is a Grammy Winning gospel singer, and Nik Cohn is the author who wrote Saturday Night Fever.

Keith Richards

Doctors all over the world want the body that did all the work for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards when he "had Hepatitis C and cured it" just by being himself and letting his "incredible immune system" deal with it. The medical community believes that if Keith Richards donates his body to them when he dies they will be able to "study it and figure out how to make other people much better" by figuring out how...Learn More

Marianne Faithfull

Famous singer, former smack fiend, and occasional actress Marianne Faithfull was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 1995 according to news reports that she went public with her illness in 2007. She first became famous in the 1960s as a talented singer and the girlfriend of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. It was in the late 60s and early 70s that she began smoking weed and shooting up heroin. She never said so, but most speculate that she contracted...Learn More

Anita Pallenberg

Italian born actress and former model Anita Pallenberg is best known for dating Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones from 1967 into the mid to late 1970s during which she and Richards had three children together. She told the British tabloid newspaper The Guardian that she had Hepatitis C back in 2008 when discussing issues regarding her health and more specifically alcoholism. Although it is not entirely clear how or when she contracted the...Learn More

David Marks

David Lee Marks is commonly thought of as the lost member of The Beach Boys because he left the band in 1963 before they released their most popular songs like "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Get Around", but Marks can still be heard in "409 and ""Surfin Safari". Marks joined The Beach Boys in 1962 when he was just 13 years old and moved on to start his own band called David Marks and the Marksmen. Eventually Marks and The Beach Boys got back together in...Learn More

Gary S. Paxton

Grammy winning gospel singer Gary S. Paxton said on his website that after losing 80% of his blood due to bleeding ulcers he was rushed to the hospital and given 8 blood transfusions at least one of which was contaminated with Hepatitis C. On the same page called "Testimony" Paxton talks about the time he got shot 3 times in 1980 by a former business associate before being forced into bankruptcy by the FDIC while also...Learn More

Nik Cohn

Nik Cohn is a British writer with Hepatitis C who is best known for writing the article that was the basis for the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. His Hepatitis status was to blame for a series of health problems in the late 1990s, but he appears to have moved on well. Today he promotes the work of hip hop groups in New Orleans and before that he was a columnist for The Guardian for several years. ...Learn More

Inspiration

The Faces of Hepatitis STD Education Program is inspired by the Faces of Meth drug education program created by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. Faces of Meth was launched by Deputy Bret King to show people what meth use does to the body over time using before and after mug shots to create an effect similar to that created by the Faces of Hepatitis pictures on this page. To learn more about our inspiration visit Faces of Meth .