Free Republic

A new study has been published showing that almost one in three men over the age of 15 are infected with at least one genital human papillomavirus (HPV) type, and one in five are infected with one or more of what are known as high risk, or oncogenic, HPV types. These estimates show that men frequently harbor genital HPV infections and emphasize the importance of incorporating men in efforts to control HPV infection. The systematic review and meta-analysis assessed the prevalence of genital HPV infection in the general male population based on studies published between 1995 and 2022. The global...

Nearly two out of three of these oral cancers in the United States and most western nations are caused by infection with the HPV 16 strain of the virus, and incidence of cancer is on the rise in recent years, said Gypsyamber D'Souza, who teaches epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Middle aged white men are at particularly high risk compared to other races. ... The reason may be that when women are first exposed to HPV vaginally, they mount an immune response that prevents them from getting an oral HPV infection, she said. But men do not...

How can Katie Couric claim to keep her politics our of her work when she offers up her own editorial positions on a variety of subjects? She does so in the course of her "Katie Couric's Notebook" segments. It's true that Katie normally avoids the controversial. On January 16th, for example, she took a bold stand against procrastination. And when she did address abortion on January 22nd, she played it largely down the middle -- though pro-lifers might argue that her mention of the way the issue has sparked violence ignores the daily violence of abortion itself. But at...

Medicine usually progresses in incremental steps. One antidepressant or cholesterol-lowering drug follows another with only marginally improved therapeutic benefit. Vaccines are different. Disease prevention through immunization, whether for polio or mumps, has the potential to transform medical practice, sometimes eliminating illness altogether. Smallpox is now (we hope) confined to heavily protected freezers in Russia and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Vaccine developers appear to be on the verge of another remarkable achievement. Two vaccines that are nearing approval by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S.--one from Merck, the other from Glaxo­SmithKline--have demonstrated in...