Penile cancer (self.zoophilia)
submitted 2014-08-23 21:53:38 by [deleted]
I'd like to bring to your attention this study and this explanatory article, both about the supposed increased risk of penile cancer that having sex with animals presents.
What are your thoughts? Does it concern you, or do you see it as inconsequential and irrelevant? I'm not sure what to make of it, and while I don't think I'll do anything differently, it does linger in the back of my mind.
~ T-V
absolute bunk.
"SWA (sex with animals) was reported by 171 (34.8%) subjects" where the hell were they doing this study? O_o 1/3 of men is WAY higher than any statistic I've heard before when it comes to prevalence of bestiality.
As for the conclusions of the study itself, I'd say it was a little bit sketchy. While at a glance it appears to suggest a relationship between bestiality and increased risk of penile cancer, they also state that people who practiced bestiality were also more likely to have had sex with prostitutes and more likely to have had sex with multiple partners, both of which are risk factors and could contribute to the overall incidence. Furthermore, the sample size of 171 people seems kinda small to me (although I'm a physicist, so maybe that's just an interdisciplinary bias). All that being said, there may well be a link, but there is also a link between eating smoked meat and cancer, or sunbathing and cancer and so on. There are risks associated with practically every activity, but that doesn't mean that those activities should necessarily be avoided. It's a matter of personal choice.
Personally I think the most worrying part of the paper is the final sentence, "Initiatives to eradicate sex with animals should be considered." That's not the sort of thing I want to see in a scientific journal.
EDIT: It struck me that due to the choice of rural people from poor backgrounds, this paper could probably have replaced "sex with animals" with "sex with potentially unhealthy farm animals in unsanitary conditions" since it's highly unlikely that the guys questioned were having sex with animals that were as healthy as the partners of most zoophiles, or in conditions that were as safe. Fucking a poorly-looked after goat in a dirty shed in southern Brazil strikes me as inherently worse for your health than sex with an immaculate German Shepherd in the comfort of your own home. Just a thought.
About the 1/3 thing, if I remember right, in the 1940's when Kinsey did his sex study, I think he found that 40% of rural "farm or ranch" workers had engaged in SWA.
Yeah, I think my initial surprise was because I was assuming some kind of long-term, zoophillia-esque relationship rather than just opportunistic sex due to a lack of alternatives. These were guys who wanted to have sex, and animals were available, rather than guys who specifically wanted to have sex with animals. I guess I always underestimate the lengths guys will go to to get off <_<
Doesn't carry the same weight, does it?
"Sex with animals" is a ridiculously broad category of behaviours. And without any proposed carcinogenic mechanism, there's no reason assume that there's a causation behind the observed correlation.
A closer reading of those links shows no need to be concerned. This is a separate phenomenon from the zoophilia we know. Perhaps you've seen the vice.com documentary on man/donkey sex in rural Colombia? Groups of teenage boys would go to a barn and fuck donkeys. The reasons for this were adolescent curiosity, tradition, and lack of access to girls. And they generally stop doing this once they start becoming sexually active with humans. This differs greatly from the typical /r/zoophilia subscriber, who may live in a developed country and form long-term relationships with animals.
This study was done exclusively among rural Brazilians, so it was the same sort of situation as the vice.com documentary. "The mean ages at first and last SWA episode were 13.5 years (standard deviation [SD] 4.4 years) and 17.1 years (SD 5.3 years), respectively." These men had the following risk factors for penile cancer:
The practical takeaway: Pay attention to your own health. Pay attention to your mate's health. Wash your dick. Stay away from tobacco.
I remember that thing. Wasn't that written by some mediocre people who more or less picked up their subjects to scrutinize from the CANCER WARDS and UROLOGY CLINICS they were working at anyway? I am not honoring that with a re-read, I just remember I found good reasons why I wasn't happy with that piece of science. Oh yeah - Especially because for the live of me I can't figure out why sexual contact with the tissues of other mammals should have specifically carcinogenic effect.
The way they selected their subjects was by taking one group of people with penile cancer and comparing them to a group from similar backgrounds without penile cancer. Nothing wrong with that at all as far as methodology goes. You have to bear in mind that this is a peer reviewed, published study, so it can't be dismissed out of hand.
However, it's true that they don't really propose any mechanism by which sexual contact with animals specifically could cause an increased risk of penile cancer. This doesn't negate the correlation they found though. I think the most unbiased conclusion that could be drawn from it is that there may be a correlation between a certain lifestyle in a certain country that includes exploratory sex with animals at a young-ish age and penile cancer. It's not really possible to extrapolate this conclusion to zoophiles in general though, so we as a community can't take much of value away from the study.
Peer review isn't some sort of magic. Half of the science papers published are plain and simple crap. Believe me, I am involved in that process, and I could vomit for that sometimes. I once even contacted some researchers and offered them some help. Turns out people describing themselves as 'experts' in zoophilia never heard about furries or ponyplay. Yadda Yadda Yadda...
So, then let's see the "explanatory" article, because I still refuse to read that paper again: "The researchers found no association between penile cancer and the number of animals the men used over time, the species (which included mares, cows, pigs and chickens, among other animals)..." There you have it. It is rather a random correlation coming from the fact that they started to look for subjects in penile cancer wards. IF there was something to it, like the secretions causing the cancer, or the abrasions you can get, or the species, or the immorality of the act, then they would have found that the number of times would go with increased rates of cancer. Or worse kinds of faster growing cancer. Or that a specific species does this. But BEHOLD! They have an idea: "We think that the intense and long-term SWA practice could produce micro-traumas in the human penile tissue, Zequi said" Now that is bullcrap. After they could not find a better correlation than 'with animals', they can say 'oh, it's the intense microtraumata'. Now good researchers would have reviewed literature on whether intense masturbators have increased rates on cancer too. If they don't the idea goes out the window. They are just pulling out of their asses that 'oh, could be that animals fluids are toxic or something'. What? ALL of them? Every single one of these mostly MAMMALS THAT ARE SO COMPATIBLE TO US IN EVERY OTHER WAY? Do I get throat cancer from eating cornflakes with milk now? Oh, right, the micro abrasions, I forgot. According to these smart people who probably never saw an animal outside their plates, it could totally be that the tissue there is significantly more abrasive. Woooo!!! Bullshit. This is complete crap, seriously (good researchers would now have revied some veterinary handbooks, but of course they didn't). Especially since they blatantly contradict themselves. Oh, only a correlation with bestiality itself. But no correlation with the number of times. But hey, could be the intense, long term abrasion on your penis from the uncorrelated number of times you do it. Fuck, now I got into a fit over this shit again.
Plus, they got zoophilia wrong again. According to the APA's DSM zoophilia is a psychological thing, not the act of having sex with animals. Like three failures on diligent review of the literature already. Seriously.
What do you think about this? http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2011/11/13/does-bestiality-increase-your/
I personally don't see the connection to the problems he describes and his conclusion
I hate when they do this:
Shame on every author ever who does this. Know how to get a huge percentage number? Assume group A eats chocolate. Group B eats chocolate with orange flavor added. Surmise we find that group B afterwards shows 4% people with heart worms. Group A shows 3% people with heart worms (of course, in reality they got it from rimming horses). BUT we can now say that group B has a 33% increased risk (4 over 3 = 1.33) of heart worm from orange flavored chocolate. Now THAT should make the newspapers, eh? Much better than the 1%point that could be seen as random fluctuation.
Anyway, back on topic, as the blogger here points out, Phimosis was the main risk factor, and bestiality (which the authors dub SWA, as if they were the first people to make this scientific discovery - in fact they bunked any literature research) is way later on the list. Well, never mind. We can kickstart our paper into a lot of attention by using the icky and outrage factor of 'SWA'.
Yeah, then the blogger goes on to trash what is a shitty science paper with spurious attempts to explain with 'secretions' etc.
Aha, picks on the same shortcoming that I picked on with the #of times that would have been supremely interesting given their notions...
Yeah, those holes are different, eh? But the Brazilians have no clue, that 'SWA' can split into many different things... As many researchers don't have apparently, btw...
Yeah, short of the weird and hasty conclusion, I like this blog much more than the original paper. That guy has produced in a short time something much more informative and better than the POS the Brazilian paper is. And yeah, the occurrence is higher, but we should rather do much more research than just point on the 'SWA' thing singularly. So that sentence is wrong. The rest in the conclusion is ok.
Told you I know stuff about science papers. Nice to meet another blogger also capable of disassembling a paper into pieces and analyze them.
Peer-review my ass. This Brazilian paper is plainly shit. They probably had problems to find people who were familiar with the topic to do a proper review. But even on the simple things like literature research they should have called them out. So - IDK. But as I said, half of the papers I read are shit. Personally I guess the real reason will be something that correlates very heavily both with animal sex and getting penile cancer. I.e. dipping your dick in crazy often, bad hygiene and so on. Risky lifestyle in general under 3rd world conditions in the Brazilian jungle etc etc. I really still don't see how intercourse with a mammal would be so carcinogenic. Recall that something has to fuck up the genes in your actual, living cells to cause cancer.
So this papillomavirus hypothesis by the blogger is for example quite a good attempt. But now we need to swab horse pussy and try to cultivate the virus in there in a human cell culture. Not put out half assed papers with 'oh, could be micro-abrasions'. Still totally don't like it.
Okay, thanks for the sort of review.
Yeah, how about the actual health of the animals?
Chickens and calves? Does certainly sound like there are several who did not care too much about the well being of their partners. It's of course only conjecture but I can certainly imagine that when in rural brazil someone does not care too much about the well being of animals, they will probably not be in a very good health state...
And 27 with chickens out of 500 total people? That's like more than 5% alone. I mean, is it possible for a man to have non-abusive sex with a chicken? I have never heard that except here, but it's hard to google that...
Look, I am not going to discuss it further. If you look at the first page of the study, you will find that they don't even control for the kind of 'SWA' contact.
I would need to see the questionnaire of course, but it sounds a lot like they more or less asked the men if they had 'SWA', yes or no. Perhaps Brazil is such a macho culture, but i would really require to ask if it was penetrative and what kind of penetration. Surely, if the cancer goes on my dick, then it should be hugely interesting if i used to stick it into the mare's donut, or into her pie. Perhaps most of the time i received it in the butt as a passive bottom to a dog. That isn't so seldom, but again, perhps Brazil is different. These variables are not listed, they at best have only half of an idea what they are doing. And that is why their elaborations on fluids or micro-abrasions are speculation - nothing more. There is a correlation, yes, that is an ok finding but i am pretty sure it is caused by a third factor. Something that goes along with both having penile cancer risk and being interested in animals.
And again, for cancer something needs to invade your cells and fuck up the dna inside, but keep them alive. All virusses do that as part of their reproductive cycle, but typically kill the cell in the end by making it explode. If you pick up a bacteria or parasite, then you have a zoonosis, but both not really cause cancer. All horses have worms, or it is very widespread. Still didn't get cancer on my dick from years of mostly blowing them.
No, that is not possible. The cloaka is way too small. That is just plain wrong. I find tye general rates very, very high anyway. Perhaps brazil is different - but maybe these people were screwing with the questionnaire, partially. Idk.
What? Why should they? Is 'furry' in the DSM now? Who gives a shit about furries?
Well, whether it is 'in' or 'out' could technically be debatable.
The point is that the motivations for people to do a certain thing can be manifold. Much more diverse than - I think - current studies of zoophilia imagine. Furries border on zoophilia, they have the term 'furvert' for that - as do petplayers who 'really' like ponyplay. etc etc. That was just to illustrate how I once emailed some people doing a study and asked: You realize there is much more out there than 'SWA' yes/no? And it turned out they where uhm surprised. After taking my explanation and links they ignored me. So much for the state of research.
A well known scientist, Richard Feynman, spent some time in Brazil many years ago and even taught a college physics class in one of their universities. He commented that they weren't actually being taught physics, but rather how to pass physics tests. Maybe that mindset has changed, but I find it tough to take any science study from Brazil seriously.
There's a world of difference between undergraduate physics students and published academics, especially when the people actually writing the papers may not even have earned their degrees in Brazil and hence not been a product of the mindset you describe.
I can't speak to the current quality of university education in Brazil, but that's not really a consideration in this case, since the study was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, a US-based peer-reviewed medical journal. If the study was clearly flawed (and having read it, I don't believe that it is, save for a few little qualms I described above) then it would never have been published in the first place.
I saw "rural Brazil" and was like WAT. I think cleanliness has got to be a big factor, as well as general living conditions. I've been a practicing zoo for 14 years with zero problems so far and can't imagine why animal sex is any different from human sex, vaginal or anal.