When my oldest daughter was about two, I saw an ad that I have not forgotten, though I can’t seem to find it on YouTube. It showed lots of happy high school students hanging out by lockers, sharing sodas, and picnicking during lunch. The voiceover said something to the effect of “This is what meningococcal meningitis looks like 24 hours before it takes the life of a teenager.” I asked for it at our next pediatrician’s appointment only to be told I had to wait until she was 16.
Clearly it was an effective ad campaign because I did what it said (“Talk to your pediatrician about…”), and I’m still talking about it 17 years later. The meningococcal vaccine is the topic of our first story below because it turns out that it might also provide some protection against gonorrhea. But I bring this up mostly because scaring the shit out of parents does seem to be an effective tactic for promoting vaccines.
New data shows that the percentage of 6-month-old babies in Texas who got their measles vaccination in April of this year was 30 times higher than in the year before.
Giving the MMR shot at six months is not standard. It is normally given when a baby turns one, with a second shot given at four or five before the child goes to school. During a measles outbreak, however, the MMR can be given to babies as young as six months. Data from Truveta, a health care data analytics company, found that vaccination rates in Texas have been rising exponentially in kids under one.
One mom explained her decision to local NBC news saying, “Kids died at the hospital where my babies were born. It’s very scary.” Another parent told the same reporter that she didn’t hesitate at all, “I trust my pediatrician.” These reactions are not surprising since parents there are seeing exactly how frightening a measles epidemic is (just wait until we bring back polio).
Remember, this isn’t just any vaccine, it’s the much-maligned MMR which has been the focus of the “vaccines cause autism” nonsense for decades. The good news is that despite RFK, Jr. and his MAHA cronies constantly lying about how dangerous vaccines are, a new poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 83% of Americans say the benefits of the MMR vaccine for children outweigh any potential or perceived risk.
The bad news is that RFK, Jr. and his MAHA cronies are now in charge, and they are determined to make vaccines harder to get. Yesterday they announced that the CDC is no longer recommending the COVID vaccine to healthy children and pregnant women. Last week, they said they would stop recommending it to most adults under 65 and announced new rules for how all vaccines will have to be tested going forward. They say it’s about vaccine safety, but experts say it’s political and point out that there’s no new data, just a new regime. (I go back to what I said a couple of weeks ago: we should have called it the Trump vaccine and put it in gold vial. Maybe even offered him a cut of the profits?)
The truth is that any of us who want a COVID booster will probably be able to get it because of the broad list of qualifying health conditions. Hopefully that will be true for pregnant women. Nonetheless this move is discouraging. It’s one thing to scream personal choice from on top your soap box because I can scream “don’t let your kid die” from on top of mine. It’s another to try to make vaccines harder to get for those of us that want them and harder to approve in the next pandemic.
Could A Vaccine You May Already Have Protect Against Gonorrhea?
There’s potential good news in gonorrhea prevention this week that has England already rolling up sleeves and filling syringes. That move comes after a series of studies found that the certain meningococcal B (MenB) vaccines helped reduce the risk of gonorrhea. (It also provides proof that Europe hasn’t entirely abandoned public health like we have.)
Gonorrhea is one of the most common bacterial STIs with over 82 million worldwide cases each year. It’s still treatable, but we’re running out of antibiotics that work against this wily bacterium that started developing resistance before Alexander Flemming even left the lab. There are some new drugs in the pipeline, which is great, but prevention is still so important. (Wile E. Bacterium Super-Genius.)
Condoms work very well against discharge disease like gonorrhea. Now we also have Doxy PEP, or doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis, which is a sexual health strategy that involves taking an oral antibiotic after condomless sex to prevent STIs. Doxy PEP has been found to be about 80% effective against chlamydia and syphilis but only 50% effective against gonorrhea.
Doxy PEP is a great addition to our prevention tool chest, but I took doxycycline last year for walking pneumonia and was miserable. My stomach was a complete mess by day two and took weeks to get better. I kept saying, “People must really hate condoms if they’re willing to do this instead.”
Gonorrhea is caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Meningococcal meningitis is caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis. I’m betting the scientists who started investigating the possible vaccine overlap had more to go on than my “Wow those two words sound a lot alike,” but maybe not. Either way, researchers have been looking at the potential for the MenB vaccine to protect against gonorrhea for years, and now we have two meta-analyses of those studies.
These reviews—conducted by researchers in Hungary and Greece—found that the incidence of gonorrhea was lower in people who received the 4CMenB vaccine than it was in individuals who were unvaccinated or had received other meningococcal vaccines. The 4CMenB vaccine is sold as Bexsero. (Or For Semen Be! as my husband started singing after editing this edition. He also suggested a 4C Powdered Iced Tea Mix joke, but I rejected it.)
One of the components in the vaccine is called OMV or outer membrane vesicles. OMV are naturally released from Gram-negative bacteria like the ones that cause meningococcal meningitis and gonorrhea. They make a good vaccine delivery platform because they mimic the outside of bacteria and resemble a pathogen, but they are non-living and so can’t cause disease. (This information is far more technical than we need in order to understand the research at hand, but I think it’s cool and realize that it’s exactly the kind of cool discovery we won’t be getting in the next few years with anti-vaxxers in charge of our research facilities and funding.)
The Hungarian researchers conducted a quantitative analysis of seven studies, six of which investigated the 4CMenB vaccine. They found a pooled vaccine effectiveness (VE) of 38% against gonorrhea infection. The pooled VE went up slightly—to 41%—when they looked only at the studies of the 4CMenB vaccine.
Similarly, the researchers in Greece conducted a review and meta-analysis of nine studies, eight of which investigated the 4CMenB vaccine. They found a pooled VE of 30% against gonorrhea. They concluded, "While randomized clinical trials are necessary, the findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis highlight the potential effectiveness of OMV-based vaccines in terms of gonorrhea prevention."
England isn’t waiting for those clinical trials. Gonorrhea has been on the rise there for years. In 2023, there were 85,000 cases which is the highest number on record since 1918. (The U.S. has about 600,000 reported cases each year but we have like six times more people.) England has also seen rising cases of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
The National Health Service announced it would roll out vaccines for individuals at high risk of contracting gonorrhea (or gonorrhoea, which must be pronounced with a proper British accent). Dr Amanda Doyle, the national director for primary care and community services at NHS, said: “The launch of a world-first routine vaccination for gonorrhoea is a huge step forward for sexual health and will be crucial in protecting individuals, helping to prevent the spread of infection and reduce the rising rates of antibiotic resistance strains of the bacteria.”
The NHS is suggesting the vaccine primarily for men who have sex with men and have multiple partners or have had an STI recently. The MenB vaccine is suggested for teens 16 to 18, so for some men this will be a booster. Others may not have gotten the shot or may have received a different version of MenB vaccine. The 4CMenB vaccine wasn’t approved until 2015 so some of this may be based on age.
It's unlikely that the FDA under its current leadership will suggest booster MenB shots for men who have sex with men given that the antivaxxers in charge are also pretty homophobic. Still, people at high risk of gonorrhea might want to talk to their health care provider to see if they got Bexsero in the past and if their provider would recommend it now.
In the meantime, people at risk should think about using condoms and consider Doxy PEP (if their stomachs are stronger than mine). They should also remember to get tested regularly because gonorrhea often has no symptoms.
De-Dicking: Women Attack Men Where It Hurts
A woman in Brazil was recently arrested for dis-membering her husband. Literally.
Stories say that the woman caught her husband watching porn and became so enraged that she cut off his penis and added it to a nice pot of bean stew. The husband was found dead and penisless a few days later after relatives reported him missing. The wife quickly confessed when the police came to question her.
The names of the couple have not been released, and there’s not a lot of information about the case. This leaves me with lots of questions. I really want to know how it went down (which is too gruesome to be a pun in this case). Did she kill him first and then cut off his dick? Or did she keep him alive to watch that favored body part get the snip and then kill him? Or did she just take his penis Lorena Bobbit-style and leave him to bleed out?
I also want to know about the stew. Was she already making it or did she get out all of the ingredients while her husband’s dickless body lay next to her on the floor? Did she eat it? Did anyone else eat it? Was it feijoada? (I love me some feijoada though I’m pretty sure that I’ve never had any with that particular ingredient.)
Finally, I want to know about the porn. Was it just the fact that he was watching porn at all, or was there something about the porn that bothered her? There’s no answer that can justify murder and mutilation, but I might understand the rage if it turned out he liked kiddy porn and was watching homemade tapes. It seems far more out of proportion if he was just wanking off to your classic stepsiblings left home alone montage that we talked about last week.
Penis stew is not as uncommon as we might hope it would be. Another woman in Brazil confessed to chopping off the penis of 60-year-old man and eating it. It does not appear that the victim and the perpetrator were married. Media reports don’t explain their relationship. Reports just say that the perpetrator claims to have done this after finding out the victim was a child molester. She also removed, cooked, and ate the victim’s heart. (He’s dead, of course.)
A wife in the Philippines went after her husband’s cock after he said someone else’s name during sex but only managed to cut off the tip. He survived the attack, and she confessed but didn’t take full responsibility. She told the police, “My husband was saying his mistress's name, not mine. I was influenced by alcohol, but I knew what I was doing. He knows that he is also at fault. He shouldn't try to deny it, he shouldn't try to lie that he hasn't done anything wrong. It's so obvious, because I see it.”
While that story does not seem to involve stew or cannibalism of any kind, local news reported that doctors were unable to reattach the missing portion of the victim’s penis. I wonder how his mistress feels about that.
A documentary released last year explores cases of penicide (a word the producers of said documentary may have invented). I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines takes an in-depth look at the Lorena Bobbit case. In it, Lorena explains that she’d suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband John Wayne Bobbit. She says that on the night of the incident, she woke up to him on top of her and that he raped her. She remembers seeing the knife later that night when went to get a glass of water:
The next thing I do remember was that I was driving in the car, and I had the penis in one hand, and the knife in the other hand. I couldn’t drive straight. I have no idea how I got into the car. I got scared and I threw it out of the window, his organ. I was not in my right frame of mind. There was no way I could plan this; I mean who would plan this?
Lorena was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and sentenced to 45 days in jail. She has since moved on with her life. She is re-married and has a teenage daughter. In 2018, she found The Lorena Gallo Foundation, which focuses on preventing domestic violence and sexual assault and helping survivors.
For his part, John Wayne Bobbit was acquitted on charges of marital sexual assault. Police recovered his penis and doctors worked to reattach it. He subsequently starred in two cleverly titled adult films: John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut and Frankenpenis.
Last year, he announced that he lost more body parts. After his short-lived porn star career, Bobbit returned to working in construction. In 2013, he stepped on a nail which led to a series of infections and a case of toxic peripheral polyneuropathy. He had to have all 10 toes amputated.
John blames this and his behavior during his marriage to Lorena on his exposure to drinking water at the Marine Corps base Camp Lejuene, which is known to be contaminated. It has been tied to increased cases of leukemia and other illnesses. He said in an interview, "Maybe I would have made better decisions if my cognitive functioning wasn’t distorted by the chemicals." (Maybe you’d have 11 more intact appendages if you had…)
In addition to telling more stories about wives and girlfriends who de-dicked their significant others, the documentary apparently makes a few good points about our obsession with male genitalia and our gender-based double standards. Prof Jacqueline B. Helfgott, an expert in psychopathy and copycat crime at Seattle University, points out that television, movies, and the news tell countless stories of the brutalization of women that don’t get nearly as much attention as one involuntary penis amputation. And Harriet Wistrich, a solicitor who works with the Centre for Women’s Justice in London, suggested that given just how many women are victims of sexual abuse each year, “It’s almost surprising there aren’t more cases.”
I suppose it does sort of hang out there loosely attached to the rest of the body, making it a prime target. But is it actually good in stew?
Reactionary hostility to vaccines has existed for as long as vaccines have existed. The Wakefield hoax itself was part of an existing campaign by right wing British tabloids against vaccines generally. It basically goes in semi generational waves: people stop vaccinating to stick it to [insert reactionary enemy here], deaths spike from preventable disease, and eventually fear corrects the trend and herd immunity is repaired.