How about a verereal disease thread?

[Moses]

I read the other day that in the entire history of mankind there has only been a single 40 year window without the threat of a fatal venereal disease. Prior to penicillin, syphillis was quite deadly. In fact, smallpox got it's name in part because syphillis was called the "greatpox". Forty years after Alexander Fleming gave the world penicillin, the African Green Monkey gave us HIV. Fascinating stuff.

[tabs]

HIV is a bomb that is ticking...and is going to go off. Mother Nature has methods of population control and even getting rid of unwanted species, and HIV is it.

[RickM]

Yeah, HIV is the modern Syphillis.

But we're not done with these diseases of yesteryear. As Todd alluded to in his recent thread.....New superstrains are rendering traditional treatments useless. (or at least less effective)

It is not the giant we have to worry about, rather the small parasite.

[84porsche]

Which one did Al Capone die of - was it Syphillis -

[dd74]

Capone died of syphillis while in prison, I believe.

Isn't some of the problem with these diseases due to our overuse of antibiotics? They seem to be doled out like candy.

[RickM]

So did lot's of other famous people:
Including Quote: "Hitler, Martin Luther, J.S. Bach, Voltaire, Thomas Aquinas, John Alden, Diogenes, and Pocahontas.

Of the literature dealing with syphilis, Pinocchio is, with its obvious symbol_ism, the best known." http://www.english.ohiou.edu/qae/submissions/SUBMISSION15.HTML

Another list:

Idi Amin
Al Capone
Georges Feydeau
Paul Gauguin
Adolf Hitler
King Charles VIII of France
Columbus
King Edward VI
Queen Elizabeth I
King Henry VIII and five of his wives
Mary I of England, known as Bloody Mary
Guy de Maupassant
Henry Miller
Friedrich Nietzsche
Arthur Rimbaud
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann

[Moses]

Originally posted by dd74

Isn't some of the problem with these diseases due to our overuse of antibiotics? They seem to be doled out like candy.

HUGE problem. There are now strains of enteric bacteria that are resistant to all known antibiotic combinations. They occaisionally cause outbreaks in nursing homes. The best they can do is isolate the patient until they are disease free or dead.

Demanding patients and compliant doctors are the problem. "My doctor stinks. I've had this cold for a week and he won't give me any antibiotics!"

[vash]

unless, you belong to an HMO, then by the time you get to your appointment, NO MORE COLD! i guess it is a good thing at the bacterial level.

[RickM]

Great point. My wife and I are very resistant (no pun intended) on the use of antibiotics. Both for ourselves and or daughter. Even to the point of "antibiotic free" meat and dairy products.

While it's obvious that it's effective when necessary I don't think you can be too careful.

[84porsche]

The best disease fighting medicine is your immune system - I believe the body can fight most of the stuff out there but people who take too much meds for stuff like minor aches are just letting their body get used to these other fighters and in my opinion the immune system takes a vacation. I only use meds in an extreme situations - hangover and I have to be at work in 10 minutes etc.

[Z-man]

Used to be a little bit of germs did a body good!

We live in a sterile society. Anti-biotics are just the beginning. Hand-sanitizers, allergy medicines/anti-histamines, pesticides, rubber gloves, face masks...etc. are everywhere!

As a kid, I used to play in the dirt, pick and eat blueberries in the woods, help bandage a buddy's bloody arm, and do all sorts things that were laden with 'germs!' Didn't kill me: it most likely builty up my resistance in many cases!

Nowadays, a kid even sneezes, and it's time to load up on medicines!

The more we try to 'sterilze' our society, the less immunity our bodies have against germs. We can't offer a 100% germ free world, and as such, in the end, the germs win.

Ah-choo!
-Z-man.

[dd74]

But at the same time, while I try to avoid anti-biotics, I've found I've turned into a germ-o-phobe. I open the public bathroom door with a paper towel in my hand, for example, because you just don't know what you can get off a door handle, or an elevator button, an ATM machine or an escalator railing.

I know another guy who wipes his plate after a waiter has given it to him if the waiter hands the plate with their fingers on it.

And as for common colds our kids pick up at school, my daughter's school has a total "no peanut or peanut butter" policy because one child has a peanut-related ailment.

It's amazing that all these "new ailments" have come up. Or maybe they've been suppressed so long that we merely did not know about them, and only because they're back do we think these ailments are new.

[dhoward]

Originally posted by RickM
[B]
Of the literature dealing with syphilis, Pinocchio is, with its obvious symbol_ism, the best known." http://www.english.ohiou.edu/qae/submissions/SUBMISSION15.HTML

I thought Pinocchio was made of wood. Was his nose a carrier?

[RickM]

Heh heh, GUILTY as charged.

I think I could get an award for performing many everyday tasks without my hands.

From the use of elbows, knees and shoes right down to the "fling the towel behind the bathroom door as it flings open" I'm guilty as well.

Or if someone walking in front of you coughs or sneezes do you secretly hold your breath or walk around the contaminated area?

Here's a good one: When punching the ATM buttons use the corner of your card. If the machine requires to insert the card then use your knuckles.

Any other good tips or techniques out there?

[Z-man]

An organization I worked with years ago, called "Teen Missions International" had an couple of rules. (Teen Missions sends teams of 20-30 youth to various short term summer missions projects around the globe, including many germ-ful places like Papua New Guinea, South America, Africa...etc).

Anyway, two fo their rules were:
1. No eating off other people's plates
2. If a team member is sick, he or she is isolated from the group until they get better.
The purpose of these rules was simple: prevent any infection/cold/germ from spreading.

These two policies were sticktly enforced and it worked! Of the times I participated in this organization (once as a team member to South Africa, and three times as a team leader - Liberia, West Africa, Hungary/Russia, and Sweden), "germ warfare" was always kept to a minimum.

Just my random thoughts.
-Z.

[Overpaid Slacker]

The more we try to 'sterilze' our society, the less immunity our bodies have against germs.

Asimov wrote about this years ago with the Robot books -- people who had left Earth ("Spacers" if memory serves) had so insulated themselves from one another and from Earth-borne disease and germs that their immune systems atrophied to near uselessness. They'd wear special filters inside their nostrils when in another person's presence to remove pathogens. I may have made a hash out of the details, but this germphobia has been taken to its extreme in SciFi literature.

My mom is an infectious disease control specialist in upstate New York. The ***** that goes on, and how close we've come to a "superbug" is honest-to-God "how are we still here as a species" frightening.

Not the "humans can't figure out how to merge on an on-ramp 'how are we still here as a species?'", but the "our number has just got to come up soon 'how are we still here as a species'".

IIRC, it's not necessarily over use of antibiotics and other drugs, it's "cocktailing" or sequencing them inappropriately, prematurely or after-the-fact.

For example, you have Bug F (which is usually fatal), and in order to attack Bug F you first need Drug X to weaken its defenses (viral shell, whatever). After sufficient amount of Drug X has been applied, you then need Drug Y to attack Bug F and kill it or simply render it incapable of reproducing (or whatever).

Problems: Too little Drug X (or for some reason on YOU it is less potent b/c of your chemistry) and Bug F isn't weak enough to be killed by Drug Y and becomes resistant. If Drug Y is the only thing that'll take out Bug F before Bug F takes out its host -- we're done.

Drug Z has been used for symptomatic treatment and it interferes with the effects of Drug X or Drug Y; Bug F has time to adapt and become resistant -- we're done.

What's worse -- Bug F has been misdiagnosed and it's actually Bug Q, which Drug X is specifically contraindicated for b/c it is used as the follow-up punch for Drug W, and to use it before Drug W has done its stuff means Bug Q can become resistant to Drug X.

In the foregoing, Bug F or Bug Q might mutate into some much more aggressive, lethal form of its prior self as well.

Obviously the foregoing is my layman recollection of what was seriously a grown-up and true version of the sitting-around-the-campfire horror stories. Any virologists or epidemiologists out there, please forgive the imprecise explanations.

All that aside, since this thread had moved off strictly venereal diseases, do you guys have any idea how many diseases your body currently hosts? How many complex organisms live in -- and ON -- your body while you're in perfect health?

Again, IIRC, at the onset of AIDS, it's usually not an "external" opportunistic infection that "gets" you, it's something you're carrying around in your lungs or your alimentary canal right now. If you put an HIV positive person in a Clean Room from the moment he was infected, he's already probably carrying what'll kill him. Your immune system is fending off some of the scariest ***** you can imagine right now, as it does 24/7.

These are the dividends of mom, instead of writing "your sister got a role in the school play and your brother fell off his bike (again) yesterday " letters while I was away at school, sending issues of MMWR (The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and the name pretty much says it all) with articles on necrotizing fasciitis or pneumocystis carinii circled for me. So I'd read them, curled up in bed, together with the literally millions of dustmites that live off of my flesh (and to whose feces I'm allergic -- which is ironic b/c their ***** is me!).

JP

[dd74]

Oh, I'm a big user of knuckles on anything that requires fingertips - so much so, in fact, that I'm ready to turn in my opposable thumb.

[vash]

Originally posted by dd74
But at the same time, while I try to avoid anti-biotics, I've found I've turned into a germ-o-phobe. I open the public bathroom door with a paper towel in my hand, for example, because you just don't know what you can get off a door handle, or an elevator button, an ATM machine or an escalator railing.

I know another guy who wipes his plate after a waiter has given it to him if the waiter hands the plate with their fingers on it.

And as for common colds our kids pick up at school, my daughter's school has a total "no peanut or peanut butter" policy because one child has a peanut-related ailment.

It's amazing that all these "new ailments" have come up. Or maybe they've been suppressed so long that we merely did not know about them, and only because they're back do we think these ailments are new.

the bathroom door is a gross thing. very few people wash their hands after handling "the package". i hate wasting my hand scrubbing just to soil my hands by grabbing a doorknob. i have seen people not wash hands after "#2"!. nasty. i too use the paper towel approach.

[RickM]

The absolute worst surface in a bathroom is the faucet and it's handles....E Coli here we come.

The knuckle technique is flawed in that it has wrinkles that can harbor bacteria better than the fingertip. I'm working on my tele-kinetic powers to solve most of these problems.

[RickM]

Originally posted by Overpaid Slacker
Asimov wrote about this years ago with the Robot books -- people who had left Earth ("Spacers" if memory serves) had so insulated themselves from one another and from Earth-borne disease and germs that their immune systems atrophied to near uselessness. They'd wear special filters inside their nostrils when in another person's presence to remove pathogens.

...or the frail, pale and brainy beings protected by their hermetically sealed, mighty robot shells.

Sorta like a condom. <-------attempt to bring back to subject line.