This is a needed rehash of what I said in January 2003\’s \”If You Think You\’re Safely Fucking, You Haven\’t Got a Fucking Clue\”, because I don\’t think most people heard me the first time.
If I had more time and a bigger paycheck from the non-writing job, maybe I could actually take the time to provide linked referencing footnotes and to outside sources on this refutation. People scowl at Kottke, but The Man Has a Point.
Warning: I am now going to be an ass and copy and paste material from a subscription only service (Salon.com). Sorry, Salon, but if you can\’t get your fact checking right, don\’t expect people to pay for it.
Religious right would kill to stop safe sex
Here\’s more so-crazy-it-can-only-be-a-bad-dream-and-not-the-actual-country-that-enfranchised-us news for women: As we get closer to approval for a vaccine that will prevent human papillomavirus (HPV), the STD thought to cause around 70 percent of cervical cancer cases, some sectors of the religious right have begun to make protest noises. Apparently, disease-prevention of this nature — in addition to leading to improved health for our mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, friends, and selves — could mean just the green-light we\’ve all been waiting for to go out and rut like bunnies.
HPV, which doesn\’t always produce symptoms and often goes undetected, is a terrifyingly common condition. According to the CDC, over 50 percent of sexually active men and women contract it in their lifetimes, and by age 50, more than 80 percent of women will have had the virus. While many cases of genital HPV disappear of their own accord1, it\’s the main risk factor in contracting cervical cancer; in other words, most of the 10,370 American women who the American Cancer Society predicts will be diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer in 2005 got it because they had been infected with HPV.
Because it is a wily virus that can slip past condoms2, HPV has long been a darling of the abstinence-only brigade, which uses it as Exhibit A in its argument that there is no such thing as \”safe sex\” short of abstaining entirely.
But two vaccines, which could be licensed as early next year, have recently brightened the picture. Both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have announced that in clinical trials their HPV vaccines had prevented around 90 percent of new infections. The idea is that women would be vaccinated before they become sexually active, never contract HPV, and thus dramatically lower the risk of getting cervical cancer.
If the vaccines got approved, there is the possibility that HPV would cease to be a threat to women, and the right would lose one of its major weapons in the war against premarital sex. Perhaps that explains why some groups are in such a bad mood over such good medical news.
In an April article in New Scientist, Bridget Maher of the Christian lobby Family Research Council (\”Defending Family, Faith, and Freedom\”) is quoted as saying that \”giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.\”
The HPV vaccine is new to the list of things that the religious right perceives to be \”licenses to engage in premarital sex.\” But it\’s in good company — joining other morality-busters like condoms, the right to safe abortions, sex education, dancing, rock music, and the theory of evolution — as threats to American moral codes.
— Rebecca Traister
Contradictions:
- This is the main annoyance with this news wire, the proliferation of yet another STD myth. HPV never \”goes away.\” Like herpes, the symptoms can disappear and the virus can lay dormant. Though no external or internal signs of the virus remain (ie, warts, lesions, or cancer), the virus is still there and can still be transmitted. For some people (women and men, which most people like to not mention) the virus is always dormant and visual symptoms never appear, however in running an HPV test with a woman\’s PAP smear, the HPV test will still come back positive.
Some strains of HPV (there are over 100 and counting) are actually harmless and never cause symptoms. Some strains — low grade — only cause external genital or anal symptoms (warts). It looks the worst on the outside, but you would rather have that than have some of the other strains — high grade — as those warts (sometimes referred to as flat warts) are generally invisible to the naked eye, however those are the warts that cause cancer.
Men can be infected by HPV as well. Both men and women can develop cancer from HPV. HPV can cause the following genital cancers: cervical, ovarian, vaginal, vulvular, perianal (anal), and penile.
What is also less commonly known among the general populous is that among the different strains of HPV lie anywhere from 3-10 (scientists are divided) strains of oral HPV. Genital and anal regions can carry oral HPV, though they will not show warts in those areas. However, when those strains are passed to an oral region via oral sex, warts often appear on the inside of the mouth. Those strains of HPV can cause oral cancers of the mouth, tongue, and throat.
Babies born to women with HPV occasionally are born with or develop warts, lesions, or outright cancer of the lungs; before the age of one these children often suffocate to death due to the severe blockage in their lungs from the proliferation of malign growths.
- HPV doesn\’t just \”slip past condoms.\” The scientific community are divided on whether or not HPV is actually small enough to pass through the microscopic pores of latex, lambskin, et al. What is agreed upon, however, is that HPV is definitely transmitted not by bodily fluids but via skin to skin contact. You can put a condom on a penis or a sex toy, but if an uncovered genital region still comes into contact with another\’s uncovered genital region (male testicles or mound or female inner or outer labia or mound coming into contact with male or female mound or anal region), the disease can be transmitted.
The disease can also be transmitted from genital or anal region to another person\’s mouth. It is less common for one\’s mouth to transmit to a genital or anal region. As in other infected areas, one does not always experience visual symptoms (warts or lesions) in the mouth, but that does not mean that there is no infection.
Otherwise, three cheers to Salon and Rebecca Traister for tossing some more exposure toward what seems like a losing battle with the Christian right over women\’s right to protection. Too bad there is no evidence yet as to whether the vaccine will work for men. Too bad there isn\’t yet a cure for those of us who already have it.
