The new Epstein document dump has been as fascinating and horrifying as we expected, starting with the fact that the DOJ—for all its talk of redacting files to protect victims—released nude pictures of some of the victims with their faces visible and failed to black out their names in other documents. Millions of documents were released. I’ve seen mere handfuls. I’m very grateful to the journalists and concerned citizens who have taken it upon themselves to pore over these documents because I can’t bring myself to go down that rabbit hole directly. The details are hard to read. There are horrifying descriptions of how girls were groomed, belittled, raped, and threatened. There are allegations of murder (RFK’s second wife??). And there are email exchanges between the men who abused these girls that make it clear they saw this as a casual bit of fun to which they were completely entitled. All of this is mixed in with email exchanges to and about members of foreign governments (primarily, Russia and Ukraine). It’s hard not to come away with the feeling that there’s a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful pedophiles who spend some of their time running an international sex trafficking ring and some pulling the strings behind the scenes of what one might call—I don’t know—the deep state. It’s not exactly the conspiracy theory that took over the internet and got Marjorie Taylor Greene elected. It’s not taking place in the basement of a pizza parlor (though there are claims swirling around the internet that the word pizza appears 900 times in the released documents). They’re not eating the adrenal glands of kids to stay young (though longevity-doc-to-the-stars Peter Attia is having a really bad week after his exchanges with Epstein came to light). There are also far fewer Democrats than members of Trump’s inner circle implicated (such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Fed Chair Nominee Kevin Warsh, and JD Vance’s Benefactor Peter Thiel). But the more details that come out the more it feels like it’s not not the conspiracy theory that took over the internet and got Marjorie Taylore Green elected (except, of course, for the part where Donald Trump was the only man powerful and innocent enough to take the whole thing down). There are lots of recognizable names in the thousands of docs. Elon Musk wanting to go to the wildest party—as one email with Epstein suggested—was not particularly surprising. Bill Gates wanting Epstein to provide him with antibiotics that he could slip to his wife because he might have given her an STI he got from a “Russian girl” was a little more unexpected. (I mean, we used to think of Gates as the good billionaire because he gives all of his money away to help underdeveloped countries.) This one may or may not be true. We only have Epstein’s word for it because much of this story comes from an email he sent to Gates which reads like a “I can’t believe you broke up with me after all I’ve done for you” letter. The email was found in his drafts folder, so we don’t even know if he sent it. (Plus, would one of the richest, most well-connected men in the world really need Jeffrey’s help getting his hands on some doxycycline?) Melinda French Gates (the former wife in question) said she couldn’t tell us whether that situation ever actually happened but that the release of the email caused her “unbelievable sadness” and reminded her of “very painful times in her marriage.” She went on to say, “I’m able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, my God, how did that happen to those girls? At least for me, I’ve been able to move on in life, and I hope there’s some justice for those now-women.” And this, of course, is the biggest takeaway from the Epstein files. It’s hard to believe that there will ever truly be justice for the victims. Even without any conspiracy theories, the files make it clear that there is a class of men in this world who think they are entitled to whatever they want whenever they want, and what they want often includes abusing women. It’s also clear that these men rarely pay for their actions. The MeToo movement, Harvey Weinstein’s trial, and even E. Jean Carroll’s victory may have given us a false sense of hope that we were heading toward a reckoning where rich and powerful white men could no longer be confident that they’d get away with it. Then Trump got elected a second time—partly on the promise that he’d release the Epstein files, which is mind-boggling—and it’s once again hard to feel like anything will get better. There were some glimmers of justice this week, though. British politician Peter Mendelson resigned from the House of Lords after allegations that he passed sensitive government information to Epstein surfaced. Dr. Peter Attia—who exchanged over 1700 emails with Epstein—has been fired as spokesperson for a wellness brand and may lose his new gig with CBS news. The Slovakian national security adviser was forced to resign after the world read emails in which he and Epstein discuss young girls. And Prince Andrew is not Prince Andrew anymore (though he’s still living an awfully cushy life). What keeps getting to me is how many people—men and women—knew exactly what was happening and said nothing. In one email exchange that includes the phrase “new shipment” and a redacted picture of a woman (or girl), Attia says “The biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul….” Yes Peter, you could have. Not only that, but physicians are mandatory reporters, so you were obligated to. Then there’s the 2016 exchange between Epstein and his soulless biographer Michael Wolfe in which the two men agreed that Trump would be a disaster for this country and that if either of them spoke up they could tank his election chances. But neither of them said a damn word. I’ve lost hope that anything will take Trump down (other than mother nature). The impeachable offenses are too many to count. He’s taking out-and-out bribes from U.S. corporations and foreign countries. He’s using our military to kidnap leaders of sovereign nations. He’s turned ICE into his personal police force and claims they have unlimited powers. He’s threatening to federalize voting ahead of the midterms. Yet nobody who wasn’t already outraged seems to care. Plus, the country already knew he was a pussy grabber and a rapist, and we elected him twice. Nothing in the files is really going to come as enough of a shock. He’s not going anywhere, but maybe just maybe we can pluck off the other members of the now not-so-secret cabal of wealthy and powerful pedophiles who may or may not like pizza. Syphilis Is 5,000 Years Old And It Won’t F**king Go AwayParsiphae, the wife of King Minos of Crete, is said to have used a goat’s bladder inside her vagina during sex to protect her from his semen because she believed it contained scorpions and serpents that had killed his mistresses. As a figure in Greek mythology, King Minos may very well have ejaculated scorpions and serpents. As a potentially real person who lived between 1500 and 1400 BC, King Minos may just have had syphilis. That could have killed his mistresses and, according to a new study published in the journal Science, it’s way older than him.
The study’s authors explain that they found a strain of Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that cause syphilis, in the leg bone of a skeleton that was buried in Colombia 5,500 years ago. This DNA evidence joins other bacterial findings from people buried in Brazil between 350 B.C. and A.D. 570 and someone buried in Chile around A.D. 1000. Years are hard to follow when some of them are counted backward, but clearly the recently found one is the oldest. The strain of t. pallidum that was found in the ancient skeleton is not the one that infected an estimated 209,253 people in the United States in 2023, but it might be its great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. The authors—who include a computational biologist and a molecular anthropologist—believe that the strain they found branched off from our modern version around 13,700 years ago (which is long before even King Minos may or may not have existed). Still, they think it’s an important discovery because it means this type of bacteria was spreading in hunter- and-gatherer times. It was previously assumed that communicable disease was a thing of agricultural societies in which people lived closer together. Elizabeth Nelson, one of the authors, noted that this DNA data “does not resolve the long-standing debate about where the disease syndromes themselves originated, but it does show there’s this long evolutionary history of treponemal pathogens that was already diversifying in the Americas thousands of years earlier than previously known.” This probably lets Christopher Columbus off the hook for bringing syphilis to the new world. (To be clear, he’s not off the hook for stealing the land or for the raping, killing, and enslaving of the people he stole it from.) As we’ve discussed here before, syphilis outbreaks swept through Europe multiple times beginning as early as the 12th century, and physicians in the late 1400s described it as causing pustules “more terrifying than leprosy and elephantiasis.” It got its name in 1530 from a series of books about a character who was cursed with a hideous disease after refusing to worship the god Apollo, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that we properly identified the bacteria that actually caused it and developed antibiotics to treat it. Modern history is one of coming “this close” to eradicating the disease in the U.S. before it rears it spirally head once again. Syphilis was nearly eliminated in 1957 before rates rebounded. That pattern of almost—but never quite—wiping it out repeated itself every seven to 10 years through 2000. At the beginning of this century, it looked like we’d be able to finally do the job; fewer than 6,000 cases were reported in 2000, and rates had fallen 89% over the previous decade to just 2.2. cases per 100,000 people. And then it came back. Again. And it continues to be on the rise. What’s most concerning is the recent increase in congenital syphilis (infections passed from mother to baby). Congenital syphilis is very dangerous for infants. It can cause numerous birth defects, still births, and infant death. The authors of the new report and other experts believe that this research can help us better understand the spread of syphilis and other diseases caused by treponemal bacteria such as bejel, yaws, and pinta. (I must admit, I hadn’t heard of any of these until today. Bejel is a non-venereal version of syphilis, yaws is a disease that causes skin and joint issues in children, and pinta is skin disease. All are caused by versions of t. pallidum that are endemic to warmer, tropical areas, and all can be treated with azithromycin.) Ultimately, the authors believe that this study proves “the unique potential of paleogenomics to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of species, and potential health risks for past and present communities.” I’m not doubting that, but my far more pessimistic takeaway from this research is that bacteria and viruses have been fighting with us since the dawn of humankind, and they’re probably going to win (especially if RFK, Jr. continues to be in charge). Read More Me: The HPV Vaccine, ExplainedI’m Rewire News Group’s newest sex health columnist! That sounds kind of funny because RNG was one of the first news outlets to publish my stuff and I was one of their first sex writers. It’s an exciting homecoming. This kick off article is an explainer about the HPV vaccine. Send it to anyone you know who might be on the fence about getting this cancer vaccine for themselves or their kids. And keep your eyes out here or at Rewire for more columns by yours truly (plus check out all the other great stuff they write about like abortion, gender affirming care, and maternity care). Sex on Wednesday is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Sex on Wednesday that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Scorpions and Serpents
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