NationStates Jolt Archive

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

Er ... well, HIV didn't exist until about forty years ago, for starters.

It's not a conspiracy, but I would like to know when all these lovley STDs did pop up.

AIDS popped up... in the 80s, right?

Depends what country. Anyway, I'd rather know HOW and WHY than when. I mean people shagged each other for centuries without condoms.

Because AIDS was sent to kill homos, and homos didn't exist until the 1970s, with the coming of disco and the Brady Bunch. Duh.:p

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

I think you're underestimating a homo sapiens' ability to survive. Also most of these diseases aren't fatal anyway.

It's not a conspiracy, but I would like to know when all these lovley STDs did pop up.

AIDS popped up... in the 80s, right?

It's not a conspiracy, but I would like to know when all these lovley STDs did pop up.

AIDS popped up... in the 80s, right?

No.

But it got noticed then.

Blame hippies. :p

Actually, there's some truth to that, but almost no one is born with an STD, so each generation is somewhat responsible.

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

You know, I've wondered the same thing, but I always thought STDs were always around, I mean Howard Hughes had syphilis, and that was back in the 30's to 50's.

Depends what country. Anyway, I'd rather know HOW and WHY than when. I mean people shagged each other for centuries without condoms.

I know that STDs are almost non-existant in Japan.

there was plenty of sex in the past, but a fair bit of it (probably a lot more than today) was inside marriage

be faithful and you don't have to worry

I know that STDs are almost non-existant in Japan.

How did they achieve that?

I don't think we know that he did, seeing as he was strict with information and prone to having people invent stories - but Al Capone did, around the same time. He, however, ran prostitution, so that should explain part of it. STDs were rarer before though, I'm pretty sure - more modern practices just spread many to epidemic levels.

I think he did have syphilis, because as he got older, his mind became more un-balanced, and his OCD and addiction to morphine didn't help either. Plus it was well known that Mr. Hughes was, umm, active.

Because AIDS was sent to kill homos, and homos didn't exist until the 1970s, with the coming of disco and the Brady Bunch. Duh.:p

However did you surmise our nefarious plan?

You know, I've wondered the same thing, but I always thought STDs were always around, I mean Howard Hughes had syphilis, and that was back in the 30's to 50's.

I don't think we know that he did, seeing as he was strict with information and prone to having people invent stories - but Al Capone did, around the same time. He, however, ran prostitution, so that should explain part of it. STDs were rarer before though, I'm pretty sure - more modern practices just spread many to epidemic levels.

STDs were simply not reported back then. We became more open.

Schrandtopia;12803004']there was plenty of sex in the past, but a fair bit of it (probably a lot more than today) was inside marriage

be faithful and you don't have to worry

Pretty much, supposing both people are failthful. Once monogamy went out the window, STDs came in. It's not as bad as it was (crab lice were big in the 60s, but are mostly gone now, e.g.), but it's still pretty bad.

society sways to and from from liberal to conservative

I think we're swinging more conservative these days

I suspect STDs won't be as big a problem in the future

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

What is wrong with being Catholic?!?!??!??

Schrandtopia;12803026']I suspect STDs won't be as big a problem in the future

You mean people will not talk about it and pretend it is not there.

You mean people will not talk about it and pretend it is not there.

Basically.

What is wrong with being Catholic?!?!??!??

In principle nothing. Just that many people would not like to be associated with the sins and lies of Catholic management.
The faith itself is fine. The Church is sick.

What is wrong with being Catholic?!?!??!??

Nothing. Some people won't like you here, but that's not exactly a tragedy. :p

It wasn't that there were no STDs.

People just kept quiet about it back then.

You mean people will not talk about it and pretend it is not there.

I mean people will be more faithful to eachother

In principle nothing. Just like many people would not like to be associated with the sins and lies of Catholic management.
The faith itself is fine. The Church is sick.

the same can be said of every democracy on earth but you don't encourage people to run from that do you?

Well, if early humans took a while to link pregnancy to sex..it might be possible that they couldn't link certain illnesses to sex either.

So possible that STD's were around, just not known to be that.

I think he did have syphilis, because as he got older, his mind became more un-balanced, and his OCD and addiction to morphine didn't help either. Plus it was well known that Mr. Hughes was, umm, active.

That's probably why people thought he had syphilis. :p Really though, we don't know much, and a lot of what we think we know came from a hoax autobiography. I remember reading that he didn't have it, and of course dementia can be caused by lots of things, from natural aging (senility) to Alzheimers, etc., so it may or may not be. Interesting guy, though. :)

Schrandtopia;12803040']I mean people will be more faithful to eachother

Doubtful. People also cheated on eachother during the times of inquisition and complete church control. Likely less then now, true - but that has more to do with the fact they simply lived less long.

the same can be said of every democracy on earth but you don't encourage people to run from that do you?

Nope. I encourage them to change the management. Something the Catholic Church desperately needs.

Well, if early humans took a while to link pregnancy to sex..it might be possible that they couldn't link certain illnesses to sex either.

So possible that STD's were around, just not known to be that.

People may not have known exactly how sex caused pregnancy, but I doubt they were ignorant for long, especially not into the age of animal husbandry. :p

Well, if early humans took a while to link pregnancy to sex..it might be possible that they couldn't link certain illnesses to sex either.

So possible that STD's were around, just not known to be that.

Isn't it pretty much reproductive instinct...?

Doubtful. People also cheated on eachother during the times of inquisition and complete church control. Likely less then now, true - but that has more to do with the fact they simply lived less long.

infidelity has always been a part of human existance, buts its rates of frequency, and how it is viewed in the public eye can very wildly

Nope. I encourage them to change the management. Something the Catholic Church desperately needs.

it did change - check out Pope Benny

Schrandtopia;12803052']it did change - check out Pope Benny

Did he change the whole management structure of the Vatican so it no longer facilitates childmolesters and Cardinals telling lies to promote the will of God ? Did he change stances that are causing thousands of people to die ?

Thought not.

Did he change the whole management structure of the Vatican so it no longer facilitates childmolesters and Cardinals telling lies to promote the will of God ? Did he change stances that are causing thousands of people to die ?

Thought not.

They certainly have a financial incentive to turn in child-molesters after the large sums they've had to pay out lately. :p Not sure what else Benedict's going to do while keeping clergy celebacy on the table.

Did he change the whole management structure of the Vatican so it no longer facilitates childmolesters and Cardinals telling lies to promote the will of God ? Did he change stances that are causing thousands of people to die ?

Thought not.

any system can be abused depending on the people in charge - those persons have been removed and greater safeguards and review functions have been put in place

as to the stances that are causeing thousands of people to die I'm at a loss as to what you are referring

Not sure what else Benedict's going to do while keeping clergy celebacy on the table.

booooo - celebacy doesn't turn men into child-molesters

Schrandtopia;12803065']any system can be abused depending on the people in charge - those persons have been removed and greater safeguards and review functions have been put in place

as to the stances that are causeing thousands of people to die I'm at a loss as to what you are referring

Probably birth control. AIDS and all that being what it is. Hopefully the Church advocates monogamy and marriage, but the 'no-birth-control' thing angers a lot of non-religious people.

Probably birth control. AIDS and all that being what it is. Hopefully the Church advocates monogamy and marriage,

oh yeah, its a mortal sin to cheat on your spouse

but the 'no-birth-control' thing angers a lot of non-religious people.


meh, its not like we're making other people do it

Schrandtopia;12803067']booooo - celebacy doesn't turn men into child-molesters

Lack of healthy outlets for sexuality might lead some to abuse their power over the kids - it happens all the time, and I don't know of a better explanation. Of course, we're talking about fractions of a percent, and they may have been predisposed to it, etc. but the Eastern Church, for example, allows marriage among the non-bishopric-bound clergy, and doesn't seem to have the problem.

Pretty much, supposing both people are failthful. Once monogamy went out the window, STDs came in. It's not as bad as it was (crab lice were big in the 60s, but are mostly gone now, e.g.), but it's still pretty bad.

That or things like the ease of intra-country travel ...

Lack of healthy outlets for sexuality might lead some to abuse their power over the kids - it happens all the time, and I don't know of a better explanation.

but first you'd have to be attracted to children......

and if you believe people can become that starved for sex why not just hit up a prostitute?

Perhaps your Eastern Church argument holds water - its currently being debated by The Church, we'll see what happens

An Egyptian drawing of a condom being worn has been found to be 3,000 years old. It is unknown, however, if the Egyptian pictured wearing the device intended to use it for contraception, or for ritual purposes.[64]

In 16th century Italy, Gabriele Falloppio authored the first-known published description of condom use for disease prevention. He recommended soaking cloth sheaths in a chemical solution and allowing them to dry prior to use.[71]

The oldest condoms found (rather than just pictures or descriptions) are from 1640, discovered in Dudley Castle in England. They were made of animal intestine, and it is believed they were used for STD prevention

Wiki never lies, not that syphilis wasn't rampant 17-1900 or that all the young men screwing prostitutes before there wedding so they where "good" in the bedroom never caught herpes

http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/7538/condom4uu.jpg

Schrandtopia;12803084']but first you'd have to be attracted to children......

and if you believe people can become that starved for sex why not just hit up a prostitute?

Perhaps your Eastern Church argument holds water - its currently being debated by The Church, we'll see what happens

One of my old Sociology professors worked with pedophiles in prison and post-prison group therapy. Some pedophiles are apparently "fixated," meaning they *only* feel attraction toward children, and won't admit that their feelings are wrong, but many others are simply sexual deviants who don't care who their victim is. In other words, it doesn't seem like you need to wake up in the morning knowing you're a pedophile to go out and commit a crime against a child. Whether the constant deprivation the clergy face feeds into this, I don't know, but it's a possibility, and there have been so many cases of abuse within the Church that it's not beyond reason to speculate, I think.

That or things like the ease of intra-country travel ...

I'd guess youth culture of the time was the primary thing, given that so many people were still concentrated in cities (no need to travel), but it could've been a combination of things, sure. :)

I'd guess youth culture of the time was the primary thing, given that so many people were still concentrated in cities (no need to travel), but it could've been a combination of things, sure. :)

Interaction effect is often a highly integral component

People didn't move much or far. Made it harder for diseases to spread for a very long time, drastically decreasing the likelihood of contracting many STDs. Sort of like how, upon contact, Europeans and Native Americans managed to give each other diseases that the other had never experienced before.
Now people can move pretty much anywhere easily. They can travel almost anywhere easily. Diseases are no longer contained by distance or geography. Add in lack of knowledge about sexual health, and some of the free love stuff of the 70s (since some of that went quite out there), and the diseases spread until they pretty much could spread no more.

Interaction effect is often a highly integral component

Cars in general were a large part of youth culture at the time STDs were on the rise, so there's probably a double-effect of sorts - cars creating privacy in many ways as they did especially. :p

Are you kidding? Syphilis was at bloody pandemic levels in the past.

Are you kidding? Syphilis was at bloody pandemic levels in the past.

Probably. It seems like STDs stick around in small numbers, but then undergo a statistical spike during wars or cultural changes. I remember reading that, during the Civil War, more soldiers were hospitalized with STDs than with battle injuries, which lead to the first legalized, regulated prostitution establishments in the country being built. :p

The reason STDs are more prevalent now (and they are) has to do with movements of population. Early human populations were far more isolated than they are now, so any STD would have a difficult time gaining the critical mass of those infected in order to sustain itself (same principle works with almost all infectious diseases).

STDs aren't very common in the wild, and most other animals that have them are domesticated and therefore are in much the same situation as humans. HIV, for instance, is a virus in the same class as Ebola and Marburg, and like them originally came from monkeys/apes in Africa (I know what you might be thinking, but Africans eat wild monkeys and are often not that serious about completely cooking their meals, so raw infected monkey or ape meat was almost certainly what caused the transmission).

STDs didn't start to become a real problem until populations rose and groups would encounter each other more through trade or military expeditions, allowing any nascent infections to reach wider audiences. Monogamy is actually a pretty poor explanation, because humans worldwide today are little (if at all) more promiscuous than they ever were, but the sexual networks today connect around the entire globe, which incidentally has more people on it, keeping the networks from falling back on themselves before an infection has reached its critical mass. Basically, if you were to track the sexual activities of your sex partners, you would begin to see an exponential increase in the number of those at risk for an infection that you might carry.

Go back to the hunter-gatherer tribes of the past, and researchers (using DNA analysis from modern humans- very complicated stuff) can see that folks were far from monogamous, at least sexually :fluffle:. The difference was in that these groups only occasionally brought in people from other populations, so the STDs tended to be isolated if they formed at all. Any truly deadly ones like HIV would have killed off their own isolated networks before many people got infected. Even when STDs became a problem (starting around maybe 2000 to 3000 years ago), they tended to only afflict the major trade routes and other areas where prostitutes would have sex with clients from many different places, or on military expeditions.

Since then, as more people have traveled greater distances and populations have grown and become clustered in cities, the problem has eventually lead to its current situation.

Sorry for such a long post, but then this was actually the short answer :D

Pretty much, supposing both people are failthful. Once monogamy went out the window, STDs came in. It's not as bad as it was (crab lice were big in the 60s, but are mostly gone now, e.g.), but it's still pretty bad.

Most STDs have been around for centuries. Syphilis, for example, gets its first historical mentioning in 1495, but skeletons found in Pompeii showed signs of the infection already. Famous victims to the disease include Paul Gaugin, Franz Schubert and possibly Vladimir Lenin.
The history of the clap isn't much different, and the same goes for Hepatitis B, chlamydia, scabies, and the hundreds of others.

Most of them are embarassing and painful, but very few are deadly, especially with modern medical treatment available. So the need for information about them is not quite so vital as the need for information about HIV, and as a result they've fallen by the wayside in public awareness. Doesn't mean they're not still around.

STDs are as old as humanity, probably a good bit older (I couldn't find any information on STDs in the animal kingdom). Monogamy in human beings has always been an idealistic concept that had very little to do with reality. Next to nothing, actually. ;)

Probably. It seems like STDs stick around in small numbers, but then undergo a statistical spike during wars or cultural changes. I remember reading that, during the Civil War, more soldiers were hospitalized with STDs than with battle injuries, which lead to the first legalized, regulated prostitution establishments in the country being built. :p

Syphilis was always regarded as a bit of a soldiers' and sailors' disease. It makes sense when you think about it. Living day to day without women, and as a result soliciting prostitutes whenever there's a chance. If one guy in the regiment had it, it wasn't long before the rest was infected, along with the poor prostitute in question of course.

Schrandtopia;12803076']meh, its not like we're making other people do it

Inaction is still an action. And people seem to lack self-control, then again words aren't really going to help anyway.

Schrandtopia;12803076']
meh, its not like we're making other people do it

That's a little like Osama saying "I'm not making anybody fly planes into buildings, I'm merely saying it's ok to do so"

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

There is some speculation as to whether Henry VIII had syphilis.

But I do agree the late nineteenth and 20th centuries, for all their marvel, saw an unprecedented amount of social ill, STDs included.

That's a little like Osama saying "I'm not making anybody fly planes into buildings, I'm merely saying it's ok to do so"

Perhaps, if the poster you are referring to has the Word of God to his multitudinous followers.

Perhaps, if the poster you are referring to has the Word of God to his multitudinous followers.

He was referring the something the pope says, so yes, to some people that is in fact the word of god.

There is some speculation as to whether Henry VIII had syphilis.

But I do agree the late nineteenth and 20th centuries, for all their marvel, saw an unprecedented amount of social ill, STDs included.

I would argue that. What happened in the 19th and 20th century was that many of the STDs were recognised for the first time, and the connection was made between unprotected intercourse and infection.
Historical descriptions of the symptoms have been around for centuries, it's just that medical science finally caught up.

I blame George Stephenson and his cursed steam driven locomotive.

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

You're kidding, right?
The English were calling syphilis "The French disease" since AT LEAST the 1700s that I can think of right off the bat, and probably earlier.

Schrandtopia;12803004']there was plenty of sex in the past, but a fair bit of it (probably a lot more than today) was inside marriage

be faithful and you don't have to worry

Unless your partner is unfaithful, or one of you contracted it before marriage. Then you can get it inside marriage without ever having cheated.

Almost every single STI (gonnoreah, herpes, fungal infections, bacterial infections, chlamydia, genital warts, lice, etc.) aren't lethal. The rest kill, and killed, regularly (though often in time-scales stretching into decades, which combined with low life expectancy could mean you'd die of the STI at the time when most people your age would be expected to die anyway). For example, syphilis and hepatitis.

Unless your partner is unfaithful, or one of you contracted it before marriage. Then you can get it inside marriage without ever having cheated.

Plus for many STIs, full sexual contact isn't even required, just the contact of two mucous membranes (such as the mouth) provided there's a cut through which the virus can pass.

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago), yet now there's apparently a major danger of sexually transmitted infections... how? why?

And not that I want to sound like a Catholic, but is this some sort of conspiracy to keep population growth low? Have all the doctors been paid off to lie to people? Do people NOT really get STIs?

AIDS was caused because soem scientist used bad cultures to vaccinate chimps against polio. This created the AIDS virus. It's in a book called Encyclopedia Idiotica. (The greatest historical mistakes ever)

Everybody! Put on your tinfoil hats! Quickly! And the tinfoil condoms, too! THE GOVERNMENT SUPERVIRUSES ARE COMING!

AIDS was caused because soem scientist used bad cultures to vaccinate chimps against polio. This created the AIDS virus. It's in a book called Encyclopedia Idiotica. (The greatest historical mistakes ever)

That's not true. AIDS developed when the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus got transmitted by an infected ape to a human.

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases

Yes they did

That's not true. AIDS developed when the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus got transmitted by an infected ape to a human.

I heard it was from a cow.

I heard it was from a cow.

Sure you're not thinking of CJD?

Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases

I'd like to reiterate how the thread fails in the second sentence. Badly.

Schrandtopia;12803004']there was plenty of sex in the past, but a fair bit of it (probably a lot more than today) was inside marriage

be faithful and you don't have to worry

Unless your partner isn't faithful, or either of you had sex with other people before marrying, or either of you had been married before, or either of you was born with HIV, or either of you was unlucky enough to be given an infected blood transfusion, or...

Besides, male monogamy is a relatively recent innovation: most societies had a harem system, whether officially or unofficially (a medieval knight was only supposed to have one wife, but he also had access to an unofficial harem of serving girls and the daughters of serfs, ever heard of prima noctae?), in the Victorian era it was expected that a man would visit prostitutes, and if you read the advice given to housewives in the early 20th century you'll find several euphemistic references to husbands 'working late'.

Simplistic bullshit.

It wasn't that there were no STDs.

People just kept quiet about it back then.

Precisely.

Probably birth control. AIDS and all that being what it is. Hopefully the Church advocates monogamy and marriage, but the 'no-birth-control' thing angers a lot of non-religious people.

My main objection is to the way in which the Vatican has persistently lied, claiming that condoms don't protect you against HIV.

Schrandtopia;12803076']meh, its not like we're making other people do it

What if you live in a small community and the chemist is a Catholic?

Are you kidding? Syphilis was at bloody pandemic levels in the past.

Don't be silly, nobody ever had sex before about one hundred years ago, there were no abortions either. It was a golden age, with laughing children playing in fountains of chocolate under beautiful rainbows.

Depends what country. Anyway, I'd rather know HOW and WHY than when. I mean people shagged each other for centuries without condoms.

Well, with AIDS(Caused by the HIV virus), it didn't really show up until the 19th century. There are few speculation of how exactly it happened. We know, for instance, that it came from SIV(Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). The question is how, and nobody is quite sure.

One hypothesis is that it was transfered, almost ironically, from Chimps to Humans from the use of Chimpanzee tissue to culture said vaccines, which were then administered to several million Africans in the late 1950's. The idea goes is that some of the specimen cultures were infected with SIV, which in turn infected the vaccines, which in turn infected the people getting the vaccine. From there, it just blew out of control.

Another hypothesis is that eating bush meat, which has been known to transfer various diseases, caused the transfer.

Other diseases have been around for a while. Syphilis, for example, has been in recorded history for several hundred years, gonorrhea dates back quite a while as well, and a host of other diseases are fairly common throughout history.

You know, I've wondered the same thing, but I always thought STDs were always around, I mean Howard Hughes had syphilis, and that was back in the 30's to 50's.

Anthropologists have found substantial evidence of syphillis amongst pre-historic human beings! STD's are older than writing.

One hypothesis is that it was transfered, almost ironically, from Chimps to Humans from the use of Chimpanzee tissue to culture said vaccines, which were then administered to several million Africans in the late 1950's. The idea goes is that some of the specimen cultures were infected with SIV, which in turn infected the vaccines, which in turn infected the people getting the vaccine. From there, it just blew out of control.



Aye, but that hypothesis has been conclusively disproven. Several samples of the original vaccine were uncovered and tested, with no evidence of SIV or HIV.

Oh, and for the OP...


BABIES

That's not true. AIDS developed when the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus got transmitted by an infected ape to a human.

Yeah, the culture of an SIV carrying monkey was used in the vaccine.

WTF?! Men and women used to shag loads and not catch diseases (otherwise men and women would have probably died out a long time ago)

You know that not all diseases are fatal right ... ?

You know that not all diseases are fatal right ... ?

Lies spread by the liberal media.

Sexual promiscuity as we know it now just wasn't as common in the past as it is now, especially considering that adultery was punishable by death for a good chunk of the past couple millenia (and still is in more than a few places). So, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was much less severe simply because people didn't have as many partners. Casual sex was simply less common and less socially acceptable, so the spread of STDs was much more limited. Plus, chances are, people who were infected denied it or passed it off as something else due to the stigma associated with those diseases.

In addition, there wasn't a lot of travel beyond a very local distance, so even if a person was promiscuous it probably wasn't with as many different people in different places as is possible today. I mean, a person today could travel the world infecting people while that would be highly difficult or even impossible no more than 100-150 years ago.

Sexual promiscuity just wasn't as common in the past as it is now, especially considering that adultery was punishable by death for a good chunk of the past couple millenia (and still is in more than a few places). So, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was much less severe simply because people didn't have as many partners.

But then again, they got wonderful things like plague and starvation instead, so I think it's probably a good trade.
Hmph. Better my tummy ache than my genitals. :p I can eat grass anyway.

Yeah, the culture of an SIV carrying monkey was used in the vaccine.

Nope. That's a myth. See a few posts before yours.

Sure you're not thinking of CJD?

BSE comes from cows. CJD occurs naturally. It appears to be caused by an error in the production of certain proteins.

BSE comes from cows. CJD occurs naturally. It appears to be caused by an error in the production of certain proteins.

Should have said vCJD

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/CJD/index.htm

and

"vCJD is strongly linked with exposure to the BSE agent. BSE is a TSE affecting cattle and was first reported in the UK in 1986. Since that year, about 181 376 cases have been reported in the UK. The number of reports of BSE in the UK began to decline in 1992 and has continuously declined year by year since then. In 2002, only 755 cases were reported in the UK; 891 from the 21 other countries reporting BSE cases."

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs180/en/

Nope. That's a myth. See a few posts before yours.

Well, it is still *technically* possible that SIV were transfered in such a way(Although, as you said, it is unlikely), as unless specimens from all cultures were tested, it is technically impossible to discern. Not saying it is true or not, just that it is *technically* possible, albeit unlikely as tests thus far have shown that many of the cultures were not infected.

Other possibilities do exist though. Bush meat is another hypothesis, as well as being bitten by infected primates.

I blame George Stephenson and his cursed steam driven locomotive.

As do I, Fiddlebottoms, as do I.