Add another activity to the list of things that cause cancer: Sheep Fucking

It seems like you can't do anything these days without increasing your chances of getting cancer. Drink too much alcohol? Cancer. Not enough? Cancer. Exposure to sunlight? Cancer. No sunlight? Cancer. You just can't win. Well a recent study conducted by a team of urologists in Brazil has found yet another item to add to the list: bestiality (aka having sex with animals).

From nbcbayarea.com:

In a study of 492 men from rural Brazil, 35 percent reported having had sex with an animal at men who had sex some point in their lives. The report found those men were twice as likely to develop cancer of the penis.
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Men reported having sex as frequently as daily with such animals as mares, cows, pigs and and chickens. Penile cancer accounts for up to 10 percent of cancers in men in Asia, Africa and South America, although it is rare in the U.S.

Wait, you mean to tell us that 35 percent of men in Brazil have had sex with animals? Is this really that common over there? And we hate to pick on Brazil here, for all we know everyone's doing it here too but we've just been out of the loop. But that number seems ridiculously high. For God sakes people get a girlfriend or hire a prostitute. If neither of those are options you always have your hand.

Here comes the science: the researchers hypothesize that long term sexual intercourse with animals such as cows and sheep could cause "micro-traumas" in the penile tissue. The mucus that animals produce in their naughty regions is different from the bodily fluids that we create, and there could be microorganisms spread from the animals to the human farking them.

You what's going to happen is these sheep fuckers are going to end up creating another disease and it'll be the new super-AIDS. For the sake of humanity guys just jack off to Animal Planet next time you get horny, you're risking your life and potentially everyone else around you.

New govt report on painkillers: 15,000 deaths in 2008

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta just issued a report on what it calls an "epidemic", the abuse of opiate narcotic pain medications and the overdoses that contributed to 15,000 deaths in 2008.

from nydailynews.com:

Prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008, including actor Heath Ledger. That's more than three times the 4,000 deaths from narcotics in 1999.

Such painkillers "are meant to help people who have severe pain," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which issued the report. "They are, however, highly addictive."

Wow, including Heath Ledger? I mean 15,000 deaths that's terrible but when they mention Heath Ledger that really lets you know the gravity of the situation here. But seriously, it seems every couple months or so we're hearing about how terrible these pain meds are and how they need to be more tightly controlled. New reports are coming out all the time about the abuse potential and how terrible they are.

I propose that nothing be done about it at all. There's millions of people who genuinely do need these pain medications to cope with their severe pain. Any further tightening of access to these medications only harm those who need them the most. About those overdoses? Each and every one of those people knew the addictive nature of the drugs and made a decision to take a lot more than necessary. Nobody abuses drugs on accident. How many people do you think overdosed on these meds who were taking it the way it was prescribed? None of them. I don't mean to be harsh but once someone decides to take something in excess to get high to the point where it's a lethal dose, the consequences fall on them, not society. And why treat legitimately suffering patients like criminals? Because that's really what more regulation and tightening will do.

We've always had drug abuse and we've always had drug overdoses. And for comparison sake, the CDC reports that from 2001-2005 there were 79,000 deaths a year due to alcohol abuse. Where's all the talk about the alcohol abuse epidemic like we hear with pain medications? After all, the death toll is over 5 times that of pain meds.

People are going to choose the types of lives they want to live. Some people have a strong desire to succeed, others have given up and want to get high. It's not our role to tell people how to live their lives. At the end of the day we're all going to the same place anyway. I argue that anyone who overdoses and dies from taking too many pain pills was likely bound to kill themselves in one way or another. If it wasn't oxycodone it would have been heroin or alcohol. You're never going to stop drug abuse; any efforts to do so only wastes taxpayer money and inconveniences those who really do need the medication for health reasons.

Those AIDS Patients In Africa Aren't So Stupid After All

Africa has a ridiculously high percentage of people that suffer from AIDS, in many regions it's up to 20% of the population. Africa is inhabited by around 14% of the world's population, yet is home to 88% of the people living with HIV. For years we've heard of all these initiatives from first world nations like the USA to help them out by supplying HIV medications either free or at a very low cost. But we've also heard for years about how many people in Africa are afraid to take these medications from us, fearing that we're trying to poison them. What a bunch of frickin' morons, right? I mean they're dying of AIDS, we're trying our darndest to help and they're refusing the one thing that can save their lives.

Here's an article from the NY Times back in 2003 about a clinic in Khayelitsha, South Africa which treats AIDS patients with antiviral medication for free.

''I thought I was going to die, but now I'm fresher than ever,'' said Ms. Charlie, 28, who shares a two-room house with her mother. ''People here are dying of AIDS every weekend, every weekend. But I'm gaining weight. I've got no problems. So far, so good.''

This clinic offers a rare glimmer of hope in South Africa, which has more people infected with H.I.V. than any other country.

What a nice optimistic feel good story about something finally being done to help those who are suffering in Africa because of the AIDS virus. But further down in the article, some moronic killjoy had to get all conspiratory about it, with the idea that we're actually poisoning them:

President Thabo Mbeki has expressed concern about the safety of AIDS drugs commonly prescribed in the United States and Europe. Senior members of his political party have called the medicines ''poison'' and accused drug companies of trying to use Africans as guinea pigs. Other officials insist that providing AIDS drugs in the public sector is too costly.

What a bunch of assbackward savages, right? I mean you think you can just do a couple voodoo dances and you'll be cured of AIDS? For God sakes take the medication, we're trying to help, you bunch of retards.

Fast forward to now, where today we read about a recently uncovered U.S. Government administered study in which medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission in Guatemala from 1946-1948. This was done with the cooperation of the Guatemalan government, and we're just now apologizing for it because it was just exposed by Professor Susan Reverby while she was researching another study where 399 black men who had syphilis were kept from getting treated in a research project called "untreated syphilis in the male Negro." What??

Yes that's right, from 1932 to 1972, the United States observed seriously ill poor blacks living and dying of syphilis while they took notes on what happened, all the while knowing that a simple dose of penicillin would have immediately cured them.

Researchers never treated the illness over its usually fatal course, even after the simple remedy of penicillin was shown to be an effective syphilis treatment; participants received only free meals and medical exams, together with federal funding of their funeral expenses after they died. The study began in 1932, continuing right through to 1972, when it was exposed in media reports.

Well gee, at least we paid for their funeral expenses, that pretty much evens everything out then.

So just to recap, our United States government monitored hundreds of black American citizens dying of a disease they could easily treat, but instead of treating them, we told them they just had bad blood, and took notes while they died in agony. Then we're over in Guatemala injecting people with gonorrhea and syphilis for a study on what happens when people are infected and go without treatment. So just think about that for a moment, if we're doing this to our own people in America, and we're doing it to people in Guatemala, do you really think we aren't doing the same thing in Africa? Those "idiots" in Africa who refuse to take our medication just might know a lot more about what the U.S. does than us living here in the states know about. What others studies occoured that haven't come to light yet? What will we be apologizing for in 60 years that's happening right now?

I can't stand conspiracy theorists. They annoy the hell out of me. But I'll tell you what, with shit like this coming to light all the time, it's hard not to see why so many people have such distrust for our government. And for people who say "well this happened in the 40s, that was a different time back then". Listen, I believe in evolution, but it doesn't happen that fucking fast. Humans today are the same humans 500 years ago; don't ever fool yourself into thinking we're reaching any sort of enlightenment with society - either culturally or genetically. Unfortunately all the horrible shit that happened in the past is just as likely to happen today as it was then. Societal changes are kind of like fashion trends, they move this way and that way but we'll never say "we're here! we've arrived, this is what we've been working towards!" because it isn't ever going to happen.