A lovely new way to die!

[elfs]

We all know about the link between the papilloma virus and cervical cancer, right? More bad news:

People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests.

The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers.

Comments

[lovingboth]

There have been quite a few articles on HPV recently.

Entirely coincidentally, the makers of the new (and currently staggeringly expensive) HPV vaccines are eager for a programme to vaccinate every girl in the country.

HPV is implicated in anal cancer too, but even amongst gay and bisexual men, it only affects 35 in 100,000 men. Memory is telling me the figures are even lower for throat cancers.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

The vaccine makers aren't the only group in play here: the other reason that HPV has been getting a lot of press in the past few years is that the Catholic Church and various other groups opposed to the use of condoms for STD prevention have been making a big stink about how condoms don't prevent HPV transmission (true) and therefore abstinence-only sex "education" is preferable (not so true). For obvious reasons, the emergence of a working HPV vaccine is a disaster for those folks.

Given a choice between the profit-seeking pharma companies and the eschaton-seeking fundies, I'm pretty happy casting my lot in with the former-- the patents on Gardasil will eventually expire after all.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

HPV is implicated in anal cancer too, but even amongst gay and bisexual men, it only affects 35 in 100,000 men. Memory is telling me the figures are even lower for throat cancers.

The article states throat cancer affects 2 in 100,000 in the general adult population.