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Oral Sex Stoking Throat Cancer ‘Epidemic’ in UK and US
- letolabs 3y agoI watched my uncle die from this... Guys, please get the HPV vaccine.
- preciz 3y agoI'm sorry for your uncle, but we have to get something right here. Fear from death is something that is controlling people more than they think, and the results of that as we have seen in the last years was devastating on our lives. It would be smarter to not place full trust into these products. Take that as my opinion.
- danShumway 3y agoThis is an extremely odd comment. The parent post isn't suggesting that people radically alter their lives to avoid throat cancer. It's suggesting that they get a one-time vaccine that's already standard for many women. What's the concern here other than fear of that vaccine? And if fear of an HPV vaccine itself killing someone is the concern, I might cite a quote I heard recently that "fear from death is something that is controlling people more than they think."
- preciz 3y agoI responded to a comment mentioning death and calling to get the vaccine as possible protection. Why would be my comment odd then? You don't have to go far back in history to see why this is dangerous do you?
- coffeeisyummy 3y agoThat blows.
- coffeeisyummy 3y agoWhat really blows is this has been a concern for at least 15 years: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11819-oral-sex-can-cause-throat-cancer/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11819-oral-sex-can-ca...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samketchup 3y agoSHHHHHHH!
- MilnerRoute 3y ago"There is a vaccine for HPV, which is more than 80 per cent effective and available in much of the developed world."
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoMen should get this, as well. US CDC doesn't recommending it for boys only because "it is not cost-effective." Get the vaccine, for yourself and boys. Whether or not you can afford it! SRC: Dealing with this!
- tmaly 3y agoAre there any downsides?
- giantg2 3y agoAll medications, including vaccines, have side effects or adverse events. Most are mild or occur in only a subset of the patients. CDC should have some data on their site, including the package insert going over the basics of safety, administration, etc. The think that I remember hearing the most about 15 years ago was POTS. Not sure what they found out about that.
- gknoy 3y agoFrom what I briefly read about the HPV vaccine on the CDC website, it seems _pretty much safe_.
- logicchains 3y agoIt increases the risk of some side effects: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28730271/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28730271/ .
- giantg2 3y ago'US CDC doesn't recommending it for boys only because "it is not cost-effective."' I believe that was true years ago. The current guidelines are for children to get it around age 12.
- looterz 3y ago[flagged]
- giantg2 3y agoI wonder what has changed. The virus has been endemic for generations and many sexual practices are similar today as a generation ago. Have the practices changed? Has the virus mutated? Is there another environmental/immune system factor?
- ender341341 3y agoMy understanding is there's 2 big changes. The biggest concern of HPV previously was cervix cancer, but as women are pretty standardly immunized against HPV it's almost disappeared, but for men it's relatively new (well like a decade, but it's still not pushed like it is on young women) to be immunized against HPV as part of standard care so it's no longer an issue of immunize to prevent cervix cancer but immunize to prevent throat cancer. I'm in my mid thirties and asked my pharmacist about it, I can get the shot but my insurance says I'm to old so I have to pay out of pocket for it. Also, yes, sex practices have changed widely in regard to oral sex, many men considered it to be emasculating to go down on a woman and sex was pretty much just PIV until the man finishes and then done.
- compumike 3y ago> I'm in my mid thirties and asked my pharmacist about it, I can get the shot but my insurance says I'm to old so I have to pay out of pocket for it. Are you sure? Also a mid-30s male and my PPO insurance covered it fully last year, no copay, coded as preventative. Call your health insurance and ask about “CPT code 90651”.
- recursivedoubts 3y agoand the gods of the copybook headings limped up to explain it once more...
- red-iron-pine 3y agoWhat are you invoking Kipling for? Cuz it sounds like something profoundly sex negative, and makes me think of Glen Beck (who used to love to flog the poem).
- motohagiography 3y agoUnexpected Auden. If I died of oral sex related throat cancer, when I'm gone I hope they will say of me, 'tta boy.
- recursivedoubts 3y agolike most of us, I doubt they will say much at all...
- Georgelemental 3y agoKipling, not Auden https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm
- motohagiography 3y agoAh, easy mistake. Auden always seemed more critical and political than Kipling.
- avidphantasm 3y agoAnecdote here, but…In the US you can get vaccinated for HPV until I think age 45. I did it a few years ago at age 40. I used to get bad ulcers in the back of my throat 3-4 times per year, now I rarely do. Hoping that this means the risk of cancer will be reduced as well.
- Laaas 3y agoIn Denmark you have to be a man who has sex with men (MSM) to get it as a male. Don't see why there is a need for discrimination.
- anigbrowl 3y agoMaybe the odds of getting it through cunnilingus are a lot lower than through fellatio. There's no possibility of throat contact in the former case and what seems like a short distance to us might be an impassible obstacle for a virus.
- Laaas 3y agoYes, but if the man has it, his partner will likely also get it.
- avidphantasm 3y agoApparently cunnilingus contributed to Michael Douglas getting throat cancer.
- anigbrowl 3y agoI had forgotten about that. That does make the decision harder to understand, unless there's a strong statistical tilt backing it up.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoAnecdotes aren't data, and one film star getting oral cancer does not an epidemic make. Plus, as a good looking actor, I'm sure that mouth of his was getting a lot of use compared to the average person; the 1% of rug munchers. His risk profile may be a wildly uncommon exception, and as a rich dude he can pay for whatever medical stuff he needs out of pocket.
- nahnahg 3y ago[flagged]
- _boffin_ 3y agoIt’s not something that is “taught” rather than something that I’d say is discovered.
- 192521974 3y ago[dead]
- officialjunk 3y ago[dead]
- detrites 3y ago[dead]
- martopix 3y agoIt would be a much better headline if it said "HPV, for which a vaccine exists, causes cancer: get vaccinated".
- Gigachad 3y agoThis post has inspired me to work out if I have already been vaccinated. Looks like I should have been when I was in school, but still going to verify. Update: after a painful process trying to get the data, all clear. Got it in 2014
- preciz 3y agoHow quickly this comment section turned into a fear induced vaccine sales platform is something that I don't wanted to see this quickly after the last years happenings.
- cjalmeida 3y agoWhat are you talking about? HPV is by far the simplest, cheapest and safest method of preventing a HPV induced cervix and throat cancer for a few decades already. Heck, I believe say most people can get it for free via health insurance. What amazes me are people in this day and age treating vaccines recommendations as fear induced panacea.
- logicchains 3y ago>What are you talking about? HPV is by far the simplest, cheapest and safest method of preventing a HPV induced cervix and throat cancer for a few decades already. There is no evidence for it preventing any kind of cancer, not a single study supporting it. The HPV trial clinical only showed reduced incidence of the HPV strains the virus targets, over a short observation window. I.e. the same kind of study that showed the covid vaccines as 90%+ effective, when in fact far more than 10% of the vaccinated population ended up catching covid.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoThey were effective against the strains circulating at the time. They probably also helped protect against hospitalization and death even in those that caught it.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y agoYou are correct, to the extent I investigated they is no hard evidence for _any_ vaccine working. Somehow things are manipulated to give the appearance of it being effective. Example: In the Pfizer COVID vaccine trials both placebo and vaccine groups fell ill at the same rate, however since the placebo group group showed more COVID positives in the PCR test ( a dubious test), they arrived at the 95% effectiveness rate. The way 95% was calculated is also a complete travesty of commonsense. At this point I'm not even sure if any data is real, or completely made up. If I recollect in flu vaccine trails they check for antibodies in the participants, not actual incidence of the flu.
- caymanjim 3y agoIt's absurd that you can't get the vaccine past age 45. I've read that the reasoning is that people beyond that age are "likely" to have already been exposed. Except there are many strains of HPV, and exposure to one may not protect from others. There are also plenty of people who've managed to avoid it by age 45, but who could still be exposed later in life. Especially because condoms for birth control purposes aren't necessary in late life. STD rates at some of these retirement villages are out of control.
- whiddershins 3y agoIs there a male/female breakdown in this data? Because the HPV vaccine is more commonly taken by women.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- erenyeager 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCan you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We therefore have to ban accounts that do it, regardless of what they're battling for or against. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- erenyeager 3y agoHi, this post is not about engaging in ideological battle. Actually it is to encourage curiosity and wonder. And I did not see anyone pick a fight nor is this egging for a fight.
- dang 3y agoIf you say that was your intent, I believe you, but we have to go by effects (i.e. how the thread will likely react), not by the intent of the poster, which is not something anyone other than you can know. I can tell you for sure that statistically speaking, the outcome of a post such as that is overwhelemingly ideological flamewar. The fact that it didn't happen in this case is an accident. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=effects%20intent%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoYep. Anal sex is quite normalized these days, and people will look at you like you have two heads if you say it is dangerous, but the fact of the matter is that it is not a sex organ and is not intended to be used as such. The rates of incontinence for anal sex recipients are very high
- 1letterunixname 3y agoDon't believe every clickbait British tabloid media headline.