lol @ taking condoms out of sex ed.

[Captain]

I think Scabies and crabs (pubic lice) are completely different. Scabies are the parasitic mites that dig under the skin whereas crabs are just body lice. Still, in most cases they're caused by sexual contact with an infected person.

[werldhed]

They really regulate how sex ed is taught nowadays...it used to be they'd make me put a 'question box' in the room that kids could drop anonymous questions off in to be answered (so long as they weren't about stuff like autoerotic asphyxiation, etc.) Now all I am allowed to teach is a 2 day district-provided unit on AIDS. I got a 'talking to' the other day after a genetics lecture wherein I jokingly drew smiley faces on the sperm cells I drew on the whiteboard while discussing how meiosis and fertilization increase genetic diversity. Apparently the administrator who heard about this thought it meant I was promoting teenage sex. Its ridiculous.

haha... i'd give you a talkin' to for promoting preformationism by putting a homunculus in your sperm cells.

God, I'm such a nerd in that I 1.) understood what you're talking about and 2.) lol'd at it.

[Dr_Watson]

I think Scabies and crabs (pubic lice) are completely different. Scabies are the parasitic mites that dig under the skin whereas crabs are just body lice. Still, in most cases they're caused by sexual contact with an infected person.

no...
my brother and mother have both gotten scabies the common way; which is wandering around in the woods in southern states.
my mother picked them up in the woods when we lived in Tennessee, my brother got them on a camping trip in the woods when he lived in Arkansas.
you get them the same way you get ticks.

[creep]

no...
my brother and mother have both gotten scabies the common way; which is wandering around in the woods in southern states.
my mother picked them up in the woods when we lived in Tennessee, my brother got them on a camping trip in the woods when he lived in Arkansas.
you get them the same way you get ticks.

A considerably small amount of research should convince you that the human version of scabies is transmitted through skin contact, or prolonged exposure to shared bedding/clothing, and that they don't live very long without a human host.

Sounds like a good portion of your family is ashamed of who they been screwin, even if they were doin it in the woods.

[Grandpa Stu]

how treatable are STDs in general? i ask because back when i was high school they drilled into our minds how nasty herpes was and then basically said that all STDs are like that. i realize they blew things way out of proportion but by how much?

there are quite a few that are really bad. obviously HIV, hepatitis b, etc are bad. herpes is still incurable. nobody wants warts on their junk. syphilis is cured with penicillin. gonorrhea, chlamydia and anything else bacterial are pretty treatable.

aren't herpes a result of a certain type of hepatitis? i had one teacher in particular who claimed that it's possible to get herpes if you've been infected with chicken pox since they're both a form of hepatitis and it's just a simple mutation from one form to the next. i don't know how much of that is a tinfoil hat and how much is scientific proof.

one thing i am curious about is oral herpes. i can understand how sexual contact can cause the spread of the virus but i seem to be meeting more and more people who claim to have it, but not from sexual contact. one case in particular, my friend's gf has it but she's apparently had it since childhood. how does one become infected at such a young age? i'm curious how these so-called physical contact diseases get spread without apparent contact to an infected person. i somehow contracted mono a few years back but had no physical contact what-so-ever with anyone who had been infected with the virus in their lifetime. how long can a virus typically last without "being in a host?" i mean, if someone is in the middle of a herpes ourbreak and they wipe their mouth with their bare hand and then touch a door handle in a mall, what's the likelyhood of that person fucking over the next 20 people who touch that handle?

[Geebs]

aren't herpes a result of a certain type of hepatitis? i had one teacher in particular who claimed that it's possible to get herpes if you've been infected with chicken pox since they're both a form of hepatitis and it's just a simple mutation from one form to the next. i don't know how much of that is a tinfoil hat and how much is scientific proof.

Off by a mile. Varicella Zoster causes chickenpox and is a herpesvirus.

one thing i am curious about is oral herpes. i can understand how sexual contact can cause the spread of the virus but i seem to be meeting more and more people who claim to have it, but not from sexual contact. one case in particular, my friend's gf has it but she's apparently had it since childhood. how does one become infected at such a young age? i'm curious how these so-called physical contact diseases get spread without apparent contact to an infected person. i somehow contracted mono a few years back but had no physical contact what-so-ever with anyone who had been infected with the virus in their lifetime. how long can a virus typically last without "being in a host?" i mean, if someone is in the middle of a herpes ourbreak and they wipe their mouth with their bare hand and then touch a door handle in a mall, what's the likelyhood of that person fucking over the next 20 people who touch that handle?

Oral herpes (causes cold sores) and genital herpes are caused by different strains of herpes simplex HSV1 and HSV2. They're spread by skin-skin contact and you don't have to have visible sores to be infectious. The actual fucking part is semi-irrelevant; although there's an increasing crossover of infection sites which may relate to the popularity of oral sex.

Herpesviruses have a nasty knack of going latent inside infeted sensory neurones. Reactivation of Zoster in a single sensory dermatome causes shingles, which may be the source of your confusion in the first part of the post

[Chupacabra]

geebs...mind answering some questions here. i'm super paranoid once i foudn out that cold sores remain with you forever(right?)

you can also get cold sores by sharing a drink with someone that has the cold sores, i think? is there any other way besides some oral contact?

also you can only get it when the other person has visible syptoms. is that correct?

[Ryoki]

Don't panic dude, the majority of people have herpes simplex iirc. It only annoys you once every so often, usually when you haven't been taking proper care of your body a few days in a row.

[Geebs]

Yeah, if you came into contact with their saliva containing the virus particles in a reasonably short time frame, you'd be at risk of infection especially if you had any breaks in the epidermis.

People continue to shed virus particles even when a cold sore or other herpetic lesion has healed, so no, they don't need to have visible lesions to be infectious.

On the other hand, many herpesvirus infections are, most of the time, no great shakes. They're kept under control by the immune system which can suppress reactivations of latent infections. most people have been previously exposed to, or are carriers of, at least one or two herpesvirus infections - e.g. glandular fever and chickenpox - and suffer no ill effects; a large proportion of people who have picked these up are never symptomatic. Many of these infections are only seriously pathogenic if the person is immunocompromised by e.g. HIV, chemotherapy, transplant-rejection medications recent severe infections (e.g. a nasty pneumonia) or age and frailty (as in many cases of shingles).

i.e. herpes simplex is no reason to live life in a bubble...

[menkent]

but it is a decent reason to not go around sticking your bare cock in every bimbo dumb/drunk enough to bend over and hold still for a couple minutes.

[Eraser]

Reminds me of STDGeneral with his bloody nutsy cartoons.

[Chupacabra]

thanks for that geebs.

i guess i shouldnt say that i'm super paranoid. im just much, much more careful nowadays to share a drink and such with someone i don't know extremely well.

[werldhed]

Glad Geebs answered most of the questions here. Much better than I could, I might add.

One thing I would add: although herpes is usually fairly benign, and as Geebs said, little more than an annoyance, frequent and large eruptions of cold sores can be bad. Particularly if the virus manages to travel to the eyes. Since it infects neural ganglia (nerves, basically), it can in severe cases infect the optic nerve and cause blindness.

And oral herpes can be spread by touching/swapping saliva. Which is why there is a risk of getting "oral" herpes on your junk if you get a blowjob from a girl with cold sores. If her infection is latent at the time, though... no real worries. But yeah, drinking from a glass, sharing lipstick/chapstick/etc can pass it.

And no, hepatitis virus!= herpesvirus.

[+JuggerNaut+]

thanks for that geebs.

i guess i shouldnt say that i'm super paranoid. im just much, much more careful nowadays to share a drink and such with someone i don't know extremely well.

then get your own drink you cheap bastard.

[werldhed]

Also Geebs: I've heard of cases of oral herpes passing from mother to infant. Is this possible? Is it a case of mother has genital herpes and it presents as oral herpes in the child after being passed during birth?
Or is it just oral herpes passing to newborn from kissing, touching, etc?

I can't imagine that it can spread via the placenta, so it must be after gestation.

eh... I really ought to ask the gf. She ought to know this sort of thing.