She's not a fraud, much of what she says is accurate. Unfortunately she has a habit of not accepting facts outside her knowledge or experience. A lot of research workers can get into the habit of only believing the expected, and I feel she may be in that category.
In this case she's reciting the standard mantra of which infection routes are possible and which are not, but unfortunately its clear that the data sampling and recording techniques which leads that belief are flawed and biased.
That's not her fault, its simply the result of standard practice in the environment in which she works.
Give her a break, most of what she says is valid.
I will admit, I do certainly fall back on that. Especially as I deal with clinical patient samples as well as just randomises samples.
I don't directly deal with the clinical patients, I'm not a medical professional, I'm a biomedical chemist and biophysist (please god almighty do not ask me to explain enzymes, I failed every single one of those written tests, did alright on the practicals though, except for pineapple (fresh), that I remember has an enzyme in it that will eat through all of your mouth until milk/similar/or a lot of water is drunk).
As for why I am sceptical, I cite this paper as one of many examples (it's a review paper so cites many others)
"The link between pharyngeal infection and cunnilingus is less clear as numbers of heterosexual men with pharyngeal infection are low, but in one series 14% of men who admitted cunnilingus with the presumed infected partner, acquired pharyngeal gonorrhoea. This compares with a rate of pharyngeal infection of 3% among those men who denied cunnilingus. The difficulty of obtaining an accurate history of oro-genital sex (and therefore of establishing its true role in transmissionof STIs) is illustrated by the findings of
Osborne and Grubin. 31 Of 1453 patients examined for pharyngeal gonorrhoea, 42 cases were found. Only 27 of these gave histories of oro-genital sex, although all 42 reported this form of sexual contact when questioned again at a follow up visit. Eleven of the infected men were asymptomatic heterosexuals whose only oro-genital contact was cunnilingus. The majority of pharyngeal gonorrhoea is asymptomatic—79% in one study; however, 15% reported a sore throat and 5% had purulent tonsillitis."
Edwards and Carne.
As for Chlamydia, the found no link with cunnalingus and oral infection. But did find a link between occipital and oral infection (who is laughing at me having my eyes swabbed now?).
Oral sex does carry some risk, but determining the exact risk is difficult. As we're just not in the bedroom with someone, we rely on the honesty of partaking individuals.
I mean, there are several studies claiming anywhere from 1 to 20% of HIV infections come from oral sex, but they fall down in that when delved further other risk factors came into play.
Plus doctors and nurses can be just as awkward as patients at delicate information (I'm not so shy, which is likely why I'm not allowed to interact with our clinical patients, I want finger sucking post fingering on the surveys but they've refused to put it on).
I'm happy to admit if I'm wrong, I know herpes does transmit orally, but is mostly cosmetic and uncomfortable rather than a health issue. Oral HPV is actually good to contract from what our studies are showing, which is quite surprising (decreases lethality of esophageal cancers and improves recovery/cure rates), syhillis is rare, but that is because it's rare in the population (but surging in the gay community following PrEP introduction), HIV is theorised to happen, but has no proven cases (although someone on another forum says there is a proven case, I can't find it, they won't provide a link, and apparently it involved biting a penis hard enough to draw blood, so I'll stick to still theorised). Analingus carries risk of different bacterial infections if the receiving party hasn't cleaned properly (a shit is not enough to clean, douching is required to cut the risk to minimal).
As for Slamboy and his theory vs hypothesis.
A theory is our best fit for the current facts we have. It is true until we have something proving otherwise.
A hypothesis is just an idea we have, with or without facts, like my bra size, I claim one size, others hypothesis other sizes. Neither can be proven right as so far no one has posted on here after grabbing my bra and checking it's size. Hence hypothesis, idea without any facts behind it.
Examples of theories that were later proven wrong: Phrenology, Fleischmann–Pons’s Nuclear Fusion, Einstein's Static Universe, Telegony, a lot of Mendelian genetics (hair, eye colour, and more, we understand now that it is more complex).
Good scientists test a hypothesis until it breaks, rather than seek to just reinforce themselves, I learnt that at my first lab, I only had a year and a half with them, but it carries through with me now. Accept nothing as fact in our realm, question everything. Default to what is accepted if there is no way to independently verify otherwise.
That attitude I may need to change, but I view it as valuable to question everything that isn't established before assuming it is correct. My first lab taught me that, we discovered a whole new way of DNA repair, we spent over a year trying to prove we made a mistake before submitting it to papers (along with our tests showing that it wasn't caused by human error). But all of us involved would hold no grudges if someone found some way we had messed up that we hadn't thought of. As we view that being more important to science, hence why we tried to prove ourselves wrong when there were only a couple of other proven repeat mechanisms shown before over decades of testing.
