HPV Sexually Transmitted Disease Now Connected to Oral Sex, Oral Cancer

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) proves that the sexually transmitted disease HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) is even more dangerous than previously thought.

HPV, the deadliest STD besides HIV/AIDS, is already widely known to be connected with more than 90 percent of cervical cancer cases. However, the new CDC report shows that HPV is not only contracted through genital and anal sexual activity, but is also reaching epidemic proportions from oral sex and French kissing.

HPV was originally thought to manifest itself only as warts in the genital area, and sometimes with no early symptoms. A male can unknowingly carry HPV to all his partners, and females may have no symptoms until it is too late and it has exacerbated into cervical cancer.

The CDC has found that within a combined 600,000 annual cases of head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), as many as 25 percent may be connected with HPV. These cancers are in the head, neck, nasal and sinus passages, tonsils, larynx and mouth. Tumors in some of these areas may be too tiny and difficult to detect in time to stop the cancer from spreading to cells in other parts of the body.

Contributing factors:

Within the study's 25 percent of HNSCC and OSCC that were found associated with HPV, the patients were young and did not have the traditional risk factors such as smoking, tobacco chewing or alcohol consumption of the other 75 percent.

The main thing these young cancer victims had in common was multiple sexual partners with whom they'd had oral and/or genital sex. Combine either of these with mouth-to-mouth French kissing and the chances are increased. The survival rate of these cancers is described as "poor" in the study.

There are over 100 forms of HPV. The controversial vaccine for HPV, Gardisil, covers only a few strains of genital HPV and has so far produced negligible proof that vaccinating girls at a very young age will guard them throughout their years of sexual activity (see earlier Associated Content article here). According to part of the new CDC report featured at Yahoo News, the researchers suggested that investigations for new HPV vaccines should be expanded, and also should include giving the current vaccine to boys.

The scandal surrounding President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky produced Clinton's statement that "oral sex is not sex." His statement, combined with our public schools' sex education training that there are other ways to be sexually satisfied beside genital sex, has fooled our young people into thinking that if they haven't had genital sexual intercourse, they haven't "had sex."

What more proof do we need now that oral sex is sex?

Sources:

"Oropharyngeal Cancer Epidemic and Human Papillomavirus," Torbjörn Ramqvist and Tina Dalianis, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Emerging Contagious Diseases, Volume 16, No. 11, not being released in print until November 2010.

"Virus that causes genital warts linked to oranl cancer: study," from Agence France Press (AFP) found at Yahoo News, 10/13/10.

"Clinton's Crisis: When Sex is not Really Having Sex," Walter Kirn;Jay Branegan, James Carney, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Victoria Rainert/New York TIME.com, 2/2/98.

"Study: Young People Don't Think Having Sex Means Oral Sex," Catherine Donaldson Evans, AOL Health, 4/12/10.