I write about zoonoses (diseases transmitted between animals and humans) quite a bit here, but I don't think I've ever written about animal-human sex. Here at Scienceblogs, though, you never know what you'll find, and colleague Darren Naish has a post about, well, traumatic anal intercourse with a pig. And it comes from the peer-reviewed literature. Just goes to prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction...
Aetiology
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Tara C. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology. Her research involves a number of pathogens at the animal-human nexus. She also writes for The Panda's Thumb and previously for WIRED SCIENCE's Correlations. Please note the views expressed on this site are Dr. Smith's alone and may not be representative of the groups mentioned above.
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Infectious Disease Series
« Breast implants gone awry...in a tattoo | Main | Progeria researchers, anyone? »
In more news of the weird...
Category: wtf?
Posted on: February 22, 2008 6:10 PM, by Tara C. Smith
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Medicine & Health
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/64859
Comments
One rumor I've heard quite a bit is that HIV arose from animal-human sex with chimpanzees. I wonder how prevalent transmission of zoonoses from animal-human sex really is.
Posted by: Jon Strong | February 22, 2008 6:53 PM
You know what? Something just occurred to me.
There are more peer-reviewed research papers on the subject of traumatic anal intercourse with a pig than on intelligent design.
Posted by: J | February 22, 2008 7:54 PM
J: Oh. My. God.
Posted by: kevin | February 22, 2008 9:00 PM
OK, I really don't want to know the answer, but how the heck do you induce a boar to have anal sex with you? I can see it if the human is the "top", but how do you convince the pig to be the top??????
Posted by: Ahcuah | February 22, 2008 9:12 PM
Thank you J. I'm in a good mood for the weekend now....lol
Posted by: Gene Goldring | February 22, 2008 9:18 PM
Much more likely is that it came from butchering and eating chimpanzees and other primates, rather than having sex with them. But certainly this has the potential to transmit disease, though I'd *hope* that it's such an infrequent happening that a transmission event would be unlikely...
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | February 22, 2008 11:01 PM
In the words of the Famous Pig Song...
'The pig got up slowly walked away.'
Smoking a cigarette maybe?
Posted by: Peter Mc | February 23, 2008 5:43 AM
ow do you convince the pig to be the top?
Laugh at his jokes.
Posted by: HP | February 23, 2008 8:43 AM
"Much more likely is that it came from butchering and eating chimpanzees and other primates, rather than having sex with them. But certainly this has the potential to transmit disease, though I'd *hope* that it's such an infrequent happening that a transmission event would be unlikely..."
This is not very likely, if it were even possible, how could it spread so quickly across the continent when the transmission rates for HIV are so low? Also the HIV in africa is a different strain, HIV 2 supposedly, so why didnt that strain turn up here?
Seems like the dissidents Like Duesberg are right, this 1/1000 cell no animal model, extend the window period from 10 months to ten years has always been around, Gallo just ressurected it to save his failing career.
Posted by: cooler | February 23, 2008 1:37 PM