The Oral Cancer Foundation Urges HPV Vaccination...(familiar with but also includes the tons...),Health

"Fewer people are using tobacco, but more people are getting oral cancer," Hill says. "What seems like a paradox actually illuminates the expanding role HPV-16 plays in acquiring this disease."

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. About 20 million men and women currently have the disease, and close to 80 percent of sexually active adults will acquire the virus at some point in their lives. The virus can be transmitted either through genital or oral-genital contact.

HPV-16, one of the most destructive strains out of over 100 versions of the virus, was first linked to oral cancer more than a decade ago, but research since 2001 has removed any ambiguity about its role as a causative factor in oral cancer in both men and women "Widespread use of the vaccine for both males and females, even if just in relationship to cervical cancer, will reduce the reservoir of the virus in the US, and in slightly more than a decade we could begin to see the positive collateral benefits in the oral and head and neck cancer world. Hill says. Vaccinating males will also eliminate them as a vector for the virus.

On the other hand, the foundation cautions that while Pharma giants Merck and GlaxoSmithKline are doing studies on the current vaccines and males, delaying research and subsequent FDA approvals will likely come at a cost: As our society's sexual behaviors change, adolescents have engaged in oral-genital sex at younger ages, and transmission of HPV will increase and the attendant risks for cancer of the mouth, cervix, vulva, vagina, anus and penis will increase exponentially. "Significant pre approval res
'/>"/>