We're all the victims of bad sax.
Posted on 03/04/2008 9:09:25 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
There's an argument out there that oral sex is not sex. For some grown-ups, it's a way to deny that they're cheating. To some young people, oral sex preserves virginity—technically speaking—and allows for what is perceived as risk-free sexual intimacy.
From a medical perspective, however, this is sex—and generally, as practiced, it's unsafe. People seem clueless that sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and human papillomavirus can take hold in parts of the oral cavity during sex with infected partners and that the oral contact can infect the genitals, too. HPV is a particularly scurrilous threat, since it incubates silently in the back of the mouth and is now linked to a dangerous form of throat cancer in both men and women similar to the one that arises in the cervix.
Head and neck cancers, which can attack the mouth, nose, sinuses, and throat, have been diseases of people over 50 with a history of heavy smoking and drinking. Thanks to the decrease in smoking and use of chewing tobacco, these disfiguring cancers are in steady decline.
However, this triumph of prevention is clouded by an unexpected increase in oropharyngeal cancer, which develops in the tonsils and the base of the tongue and is apt to show up in those who don't smoke or drink heavily, and in younger people. Earlier this month, researchers from Johns Hopkins reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that between 1973 and 2004 there had been a near doubling of the incidence of these HPV-related oral cancers among people in their 40s.
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this rise in oropharyngeal cancer is linked to changing sexual practices and, in particular, ones that involve bathing the throat with HPV-infected fluid. Increasingly, scientists are implicating HPV-16, and in some cases 18, the same ones that causes cervical cancer.
In 2006, a Swedish study of preserved surgical specimens from excised oropharyngeal cancers going back over 30 years identified HPV-16 in less than a quarter of specimens removed in the 1970s. By the 1990s, the proportion was 57 percent. After 2000, it was 68 percent. In 2007, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found HPV-16 in 72 percent of oropharyngeal cancers in the United States. Not proof, but based on correlations with sexual behavior, and an abundance of similar findings both here and around the world over the past few years, there is credible if not alarming medical concern that the infection is being acquired through unprotected oral sex.
That our children might be at growing risk for this deadly cancer is particularly unnerving. Health surveys indicate that well over half of American teens now engage in oral sex, with about 10 to 20 percent claiming "technical virginity." Pediatricians will tell you that this behavior is fueled by the adolescents' belief that oral sex is risk-free play, making it more common and acceptable. But few practice it safely. Some of this is anecdotal. But British researchers determined that more than 80 percent of university students ages 16 to 21 failed to protect themselves with condoms during oral sex. This is an age group well known for diligently using them during vaginal sex.
Granted, the major risk for STDs comes with vaginal sex, but the relative ease and growing frequency of oral sex among those engaging in casual "hookups" is a virtual epidemic in the making. Providing our young people with graphic medical information and stern parental and medical guidance is long overdue. As with all sex education, the abstinence message should be foremost and explicit. But it's not enough. They must also know that safe sex applies to sex by mouth, too. And, that's a message for all ages, unless one has a single faithful partner.
Concern about the growing risk of oropharyngeal cancer also bears on the use of the new HPV vaccine, Gardasil, which protects against HPV-16 and 18. Currently it's approved for young women only. Yet men contract, carry, and transmit HPV and develop HPV-related genital cancers, though far less commonly than do women. But, when it comes to HPV-related tonsil and tongue cancer, men are at greater risk than women. This should provide strong impetus for an HPV vaccine that works for men, too—an effort that's taking an inexplicably long time. Before anyone thinks, however, that a cancer vaccine will deliver a free pass on risky behavior, just imagine for a moment what a rip roaring case of pharyngeal gonorrhea might look like. It's not pretty.
Promiscuity is very “expensive” indeed...
Mom Ping.............
We're all the victims of bad sax.
Must you always be fair-minded?!?!
A little ideological fanaticism would be nice—after all we are at war with the Democrats,or at least that’s how they see it.
How about some standard unhinged partisan hyperbole for the cause,friend?
Remember what Tarzan,Tonto and Frankenstein’s monster say:
“Newt Good! Clinton Bad!”
:>)
YES. ALL THANKS TO OUR ILLUSTRIOUS EX- COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AND QUITE POSSIBLY OUR NEXT “FIRST LADY”, WILLIAM JEFFERSON BLYTHE CLINTON AND HIS ENABLER, HILLARY DIANE RODHAM CLINTON, QUITE POSSIBLY OUR NEXT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF!
Anyway, people with frontline experience (such as Dr. Miriam Grossman of UCLA Student Health Services) say the oral STD's (and related cancers) are rising surprisingly fast. Like one day, a doctor says, "Hmm, this is unusual, I've never seen a case like this before in my x years of clinical practice," and the next week there's 3 of them, and then... reminds you of AIDS in the early '80's.
Oral is perverted? What are you 100?
What is the point of oral sex WITH a condom??
Or maybe I'm just a old woman and don't get it!
Hope she understands that boys like that would move on anyway even if she did give it up. Just a little bit later, is all.
Be not disappointed for your time nears. Sounds like you did an awesome job.
A 50 gallon garbage bag would just about cover it.
Bill Clinton’s legacy: Millions of people with throat cancer.
I guess I'm just an old woman who don't wanna go THERE.........
We tried to take the high road. We have an 11 yoa one that will be a little harder she is more into “boys” than the older one was a that age and what little exposure she gets at school and tv is hard to combat.
She is so naive she thinks everyone and I mean everyone is a “friend”. Sadly she learned the other day when a “friend” did some things and I had to drill it into her that I was right and she was not, that only a small fraction of acquaintances are real friends. She’s learning.
LOL! That was going to be my question. Whats up with social conservatives and their moratorium on pleasure? The crux of the article is that schoolkids will be doing this (which isn’t good), but if you’re married, so what?
Lighten up, people.
Throat cancer is nothing fun.
I know someone who has it and they are undergoing chemo and radiation to shrink the tumor so they can operate with as little damage as possible. In the meantime, this person is having a feeding tube put in the stomach cause I guess this treatment really interferes with your ability to swallow.
The treatment is predicted to last 6-8 weeks BEFORE the surgery, if it’s successful.
Learning all that would be more than enough to get me to change my behavior, but teens think they’re going to live forever, so who knows.
I have to ask: is this another gay disease we will have to pretend threatens everybody?
The sexual practices described here used to be recognized as sodomy, even if it was between two people of different sex.
Perhaps the mainstreaming of this unnatural practice wasn't worth an impeachment.
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