By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Researchers are reporting a troubling uptick in the incidence of certain head and neck cancers among middle-aged and even younger Americas which may be linked to the increased practice of oral sex, which many sex ed programs promote as “safer sex.”
USA Today is reporting that the reason oral sex is suspected in the increased number of these cancers is because of the nationwide epidemic of a sexually transmitted disease known as the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is a known risk fact for certain head and neck cancers. The increased popularity of oral sex among youth, which is touted by Planned Parenthood and others in the sex industry as being “safer sex,” is suspected as being the culprit behind these rising numbers.
According to Dr. William Lydiatt, professor and chief of head and neck surgical oncology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, while the overall incidence of head and neck cancers is going down, largely because fewer people are smoking, the incidence of cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been going up over the past decades. And those are the ones that are more likely to test positive for HPV.
“It’s gotten to the point now where 60 to 70 percent of all tonsil cancers in the U.S. are HPV-related,” Lydiatt said.
This finding is in line with a 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that younger people with head and neck cancers who tested positive for oral HPV infection were more likely to have had multiple vaginal and oral sex partners in their lifetime.
In this study, having six or more oral sex partners over a lifetime was associated with a 3.4 times higher risk for oropharyngeal cancers of the base of the tongue, back of the throat or tonsils. Having 26 or more vaginal-sex partners tripled the risk.
And the association increased as the number of partners in either category increased, USA Today reports.
Researchers also noted that cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been increasing every year since 1973, and wrote that “widespread oral sex practices among adolescents may be a contributing factor in this increase.”
The practice of oral sex has become widespread in the U.S. with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that, in 2002, some 90 percent of males and 88 percent of females aged 25 to 44 reported having oral sex with a partner of the opposite sex.
At the same time, HPV infection rates in the country have skyrocketed, with the American Social Health Association reporting that anywhere from 75 to 80 percent of sexually active Americans can expect to be infected with HPV at some point in their lifetime.
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