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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...

COMMENTARY For decades, public health advocates have championed harm reduction for people who cannot stop taking health risks — or do not want to. Needle exchange is a classic example. Intravenous drug users get clean needles because, the reasoning goes, contracting and spreading AIDS is worse than making heroin use a little easier. But harm reduction for hard-core smokers is another matter. At issue is a form of smokeless tobacco, a popular Swedish product called snus (rhymes with loose) that satisfies smokers' nicotine addiction with negligible health risks of its own. But to many foes of smoking, it is not...

Judge defends ban on oral sex By Mark Baker Asia Editor, Singapore, February 18, 2004 Singapore's 77-year-old chief judge has given an earthy defence of his country's notorious prohibition on oral sex - declaring the law should be upheld to safeguard Asian standards of decency. Jailing a 25-year-old former policeman for 12 months for receiving oral sex from a teenage girl, Chief Justice Yong Pung How said that despite growing permissiveness in some countries there were "certain offences that are so repulsive in Asian culture". "There are countries where you can go and suck away for all you are worth,"...

Good girls do School counsellors, researchers and teenagers themselves say that girls as young as 12 and 13 are performing oral sex -- not just the class 'bad girls,' but students from every walk of life. They don't consider it real sex, but an act almost as normal as acne and cafeteria gossip. In today's oversexed consumer culture, reports SARA WILSON, popularity commands a high price Alexa is 15 now, but she first heard about it when she was 10. She remembers thinking, "Ewww." Disgusting. The next time the subject came up, she was 13, an eighth grader at an...

Oral sex linked to mouth cancer   19:00 25 February 04     Oral sex can lead to oral tumours. That is the conclusion of researchers who have proved what has long been suspected, that the human papilloma virus can cause oral cancers. The risk, thankfully, is tiny. Only around 1 in 10,000 people develop oral tumours each year, and most cases are probably caused by two other popular recreational pursuits: smoking and drinking. The researchers are not recommending any changes in behaviour. The human papilloma virus (HPV), an extremely common sexually transmitted infection, has long been known to cause cervical cancers. Several...

Oral Sex Shown to Be Linked to Mouth Cancer Wed Feb 25, 2:54 PM ET Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo! LONDON (Reuters) - Although the risk is small and it is more likely to result from heavy drinking and smoking, scientists have uncovered evidence that oral sex can cause mouth cancer. Researchers had suspected that a sexually transmitted infection that is linked to cervical cancer could also be associated with tumors in the mouth. Now a study by researchers working for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France seems to have confirmed it. "Oral...

Lying in the name of public health A recent study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the most popular brands of smokeless tobacco in this country are the ones with the highest levels of readily absorbed nicotine. For the researchers, the finding was an opportunity to once again mislead the public about the hazards of oral snuff. "Consumers need to know that smokeless tobacco products...are not safe alternatives to smoking," said co-author Patricia Richter of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. "The amount of nicotine absorbed per dose from using smokeless tobacco...