On Sunday , Bloomberg ran astoryon its internet site link up the supposed decrease and disappearance of pubic lice ( Pthirus os pubis , a.k.a . “ crabs ” ) with the popularity of bikini wax . It ’s kind of a feeling good story : an expensive , painful dress ritual paying off with the eradication of an nettlesome and embarrassing parasite . It ’s also pretty much pulled out of lean air .
The whole premise of the account — crabs are disappearing — dead - final stage fairly quickly as far as evidence goes . The Bloomberg story pegs its thesis almost exclusively on the fact that the Sydney Sexual Health Centre in Australia “ has n’t seen a woman with pubic louse since 2008 , ” and one of the Dr. there chalk it up to “ better grooming . ”
That ’s one clinic , a passably minuscule datum lay from which to extrapolate and declare a specie endangered . The Bloomberg musical composition finally acknowledge that there ’s really no other datum to be had about halfway into the story :
So no one in reality recognize if there are less lice out there or not . you’re able to track cases in a single infirmary or group of hospitals , mayhap , but no one ’s recording the information on a large scale . Good for the taradiddle ’s authors for coming clear on that , but it feel like a bait and switch , and after the story went viral , this crucial distributor point got lost inlotsofotherpiecesthatriffedon it . What ’s more , no one is pointing the digit at two-piece waxes as the cause of any worm die - off — if there is one — except that one physician , and the tale does n’t even make a fount for his statement .
Data deficiency exposed , the article also cites aletterfrom the daybook Sexually Transmitted Infections , in which two doctors at a Leeds , England clinic muse on a drop in lice case at their billet and plug into it to waxing . The trouble , again , is fiddling to no data , and test to draw a trend out of watching from a unmarried site . Here , the observers admit they do n’t even know the waxing charge per unit or habits of the patients behind their numbers racket . All they can say is that the downward movement “ coincided with the introduction of extensive waxing proficiency , such as the ' Brazilian , ' in adult female in the United Kingdom . ”
If you ’ll pace with me into the Speculation Zone , I do n’t think we need to occupy about the total release of pubic louse . For one thing , they also take up residence in eyebrows , and are n’t completely reliant on our nether regions to make their home . And let ’s not forget that not every man and woman in the world has the sumptuousness of being able to wax or trim their naughty bits , or even wash them on a regular basis with soap and water supply . If train is a threat to sucking louse - kind , it ’s one that blockade at the edge of the industrialised world .
However , neither I nor the writers at Bloomberg , nor a doctor in Sydney or Leeds , can say anything definitive about whether the lice are out there or not , because the empiric grounds unquestionably is n’t .
