It may be an apocryphal
tale, but here's an interesting story about how sailors of yore
determined if a potential suitor had syphilis.
As
demonstrated by Victoria Bond and myself,
Victoria is feeling my right elbow whilst shaking my hand. The epitrochlear
lymph nodes in
the elbow get
swollen with syphilis. The story goes that when
sailors arrived in a new port, they would greet the girls in this manner
to determine if they had syphilis. Another story goes that they did
this whilst dancing. Whatever the case, it is true that the nodes swell
when suffering from syphilis, although it's not fail safe as there are a
number of things that could cause the swelling, including infection. We
made this short video demonstration of the handshake when
recording Diffusion Science
Radio.
While we're on the topic of
syphilis, reports
out of the UK this week are laying the blame for a rise in syphilis
cases at the feet of social networking site Facebook. This story is
the up there with the dangerous
cookie story as one of the more stupid 'science' stories I have
read. The Telegraph reported Facebook
'linked to rise in syphilis', however The Sun takes the cake
with Sex
diseases soaring due to Facebook romps.
The news articles are based on an NHS news release titled
Warning
as syphilis cases increase. The news release does not
mention Facebook, but does mention "social networking sites":
Professor
Peter Kelly, Executive Director of Public Health for
NHS Tees said syphilis has risen sharply in the last year.
"There
has been a four fold increase in the number of syphilis cases
detected with more young women being affected," he said. "Syphilis is a
devastating disease which can lead to serious health problems to the
infected individual, their sexual contacts and an unborn child (in
pregnant women). It is easily preventable and treatment is simple and
effective. Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the
biggest risk for syphilis. Social networking sites are making it
easier for people to meet up for casual sex. It is important that
people avoid high risk sexual behaviours and practise safe sex to
protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections."
Syphilis
cases have increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside. The
UK newspapers, independent of the NHS press release, found that Facebook
is very popular in Sunderland. The problem here of course is our
old friend "correlation vs. causation" - it is in no way clear that
Facebook (or more broadly online social networking) is connected to the
rise in syphilis. Syphilis cases have been on the rise for some time
now. And even if Facebook is increasing casual sex in these regions,
should we really blame it for someone's sexual habits? Other problems
include the fact that the sample size is tiny (30 people), there is no
mention of other sexually transmitted diseases, and no actual evidence
to connect social networking to syphilis is presented - it is a merely a
comment. There is a good discussion of this at Bad
Science.
