http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780622/

I think including the poster is more an indictment of outdated beliefs surrounding STDs and the PSAs about them than anything.

Need to do somethin 'bout that.....

@8 the line "Too bad there weren’t PSAs back in the 1400s." may be tongue in cheek but it becomes less funny when you look at the long history of rape and colonization in the new world, begun by columbus and his men...especially when the article states that syphillis probably only reached its virulence in europe. on these continents it wasn't the deadly disease passed on by dirty men/women.

so even if it is a humorous attempt, the author is still equating the women that pinzon raped as girls who "may have looked clean but..."

Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus' men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."

While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell…Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold…"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1011-27.htm

A tawdry, syphlitic Anne Frank....

I'm not exactly sure the point of the article or the tongue in cheek expressions was to do villify or justify ANYTHING Colombus or his crew did. Our generation in particular has grown up with the notion that Colombus was an idiot at best and MOST inhumane at worst. I mean, do you want to use this article as another excuses to berate him some more?

I guess as far as I'm concerned... Colombus was a douche ... he failed as a colonist or even a decent human being, but he is dead and it's over.

What I want to know, what does it say about the rates of syphilus in the new world BEFORE Colombus came? Sexual culture, etc. etc. Was this how the Mayans became extinct?

Define clean.

therego ... not a much.

Still, anybody that knows anything about infectious diseases knows that evolutionarily the LAST thing a disease wants to do is kill the host. Killing the host eventually kills ALL the hosts, what kind of environment and culture breeds syphilis? Maybe this fact can offer clues about native american sex?

Excuse me, but this is not exactly correct.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_syphilis/

OR perhaps the more historic version is another variant. Diseases often die out when they kill too many of their hosts ... Like I said, we may never know.

OR perhaps the more historic version is another variant. Diseases often die out when they kill too many of their hosts ... perhaps Mayans

But I guess what irks me is the whole my ethnicity/culture is holier than though mentality. After we agree that it probably was NOT the anglos, I don't really think it matters ... and lets face it sex sells, has been sold and most likely will always be sold, and stories about sex are interesting.

Since indigenous peoples had likely been living with syphilus for generations, they developed an immunity to it, just as Europeans developed an immunity to smallpox. Of course, smallpox did a hell of a lot more damage to Native Americans than syphilus did to Europeans.

I've experienced it in the UK, and in Germany. You think you get rid of it, but uh-uh. It's a bitch.

Oh, and NapoleonXIV@14 wins.