Posted on 08/03/2009 10:21:47 PM PDT by neverdem
Scientists say they have made a discovery that may help explain the racial gap in cancer survival, providing clues to why white patients often outlive blacks even when they have what appear to be the same cancers.
The insights come from research at the University of Maryland into throat cancer and squamous-cell cancers of the head and neck, which have been increasing sharply in recent years, apparently because of the human papillomavirus — the same sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer and is the target of a vaccine for girls.
The virus can also be spread through oral sex, causing cancer of the throat and tonsils, or oropharyngeal cancer.
The new research builds on earlier work suggesting that throat cancer tumors caused by the virus behave very differently from other throat cancers, and actually respond better to treatment. And the new research suggests that whites are more likely than blacks to have tumors linked to the virus, which may explain the poor outcomes of African-Americans with HPV-negative tumors.
University of Maryland researchers did the study after finding that their white patients with throat cancer were surviving 70 months on average, compared with 25 months for their black patients, even though all were treated at the same hospital.
The racial disparity in survival for oropharyngeal cancers explained most of the gap between blacks and whites for all head and neck cancers, the researchers said.
“We were shocked to see this in our own institution, where more than half of the patients we treat are African-American,” said Dr. Kevin J. Cullen, director of the Greenebaum Cancer Center at University of Maryland and senior author of the new study, in the September issue of Cancer Prevention Research.
Around the same time, the Maryland researchers were analyzing specimens of head and neck tumors...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Cheers!
Now just how can you throw a race card on that kind of information?
I don't think you can. They were profiled for HPV, and the odds were that blacks were HPV negative.
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You mean there is no one to blame or sue?
Nope. As Clinton explained, what he did is not something that can be called oral sex. In contrast, this study is about oral sex. You see, it depends on what the definition of is, is.
bookmark
Do they purposely write to be vague?
Are they saying that blacks are surviving for shorter periods then whites because they have more oral sex then whites?
No. Read it again. They infer the opposite. Blacks are more likely to have squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck that are negative for exposure to humam papilloma virus. When both blacks and whites were negative for evidence of exposure to humam papilloma virus, there was no significant difference in mortality with respect to squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck.
So are they saying Whites are living longer because they ARE having more oral sex then Blacks?
no...because they are having more oral sex than blacks....
Solutions..... blacks need to have more oral sex in order to get the virus that causes the cancer... jeez, simple solution.
As PETULA CLARK lyrics say “When you’re alone and life is making you lonely. You can always go - downtown.”
It might help the Town Hall meeting to talk about how the Great Society created an entire class of people that have problems caused by government - no men in a welfar home, no work, high % in jail - then ask “Is the great society program of the LBJ error a road map for health care?”
Why would they want the virus that causes the cancer?
How did the get the cancer if they didn't have the virus in the first place?
It’s insanity. They are saying that whites with head/neck cancer are surviving longer because their cancers are more often caused by HPV, which doesn’t kill you as quick apparently. Then they take the rationale further by saying the whites are getting cancer from HPV more often because of differing sexual behavior than blacks. But they are leaving out so much- if let’s say whites get cancer from HPV more often than blacks because they have more oral sex which apparently makes it easier to spread the HPV virus, then it should also follow that whites are getting cancer more often, there being this additional risky behavior. So what’s being touted as “better”; longer survival based on cause of the cancer; carries with it the implication there are more whites percentage getting head/neck cancers. So how can surviving longer but more people getting cancer, be better than less people getting cancer even if those people don’t survive as long. Seeing as the longer survival time is still less than two years you are dying pretty quick either way.
That is why they tried to make it so hard to understand!
Another great 'research study'!
smoking , drinking alcohol, mouthwash with alcohol, diet lacking in beta carotene, low intake of vitamin C, poor dental hygiene ......
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