Re:Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?
by LorenPechtel on Thursday January 26, 2023 @03:54PM
(#34538685)
It looks like the European strain wasn't as deadly as the American strain. Pre-Columbus skeletons showing signs have been found.
However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)
However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)