Was commenting from my blackberry, got cut off. To continue…

Sorry but I’m still in a “wait and see” mode in regards to this drug. Current OTCs have been on the market for decades, with no major side effects. However in recent years, it seems the FDA is most concerned with help Big Pharma sell drugs rather than making sure they are safe.

Sor

People really do live in bubbles, don’t they? Or maybe I am just f’ed up, but I am scared shitless of cancer (killed my dad too young, as well as his mother, even younger) and will do anything to avoid it. I don’t think there’s much I can do to help others prevent it, but here’s one thing I can do.

@Becky – maybe the oral cancer angle would encourage some, but I still think a lot of people will think “Ew, my kid’s never having oral sex!!” But it might encourage some guys to get it? I don’t know.

Oral cancers are bad news. My dad died of head and neck cancer that started on his tongue. It was horrific. It can affect your eating, breathing, and speech. By the end my dad could not talk or eat, he had a trach and a G-tube.

Anyway, she told me that vaccine makers added the strains that prevent warts specifically to get men to want the vaccine. Warts have no health implications, but have serious social/mental/sex-life implications, and vaccine-makers knew they stood a better chance appealing to men’s vanity then to their concern about their female sex partners’ risk of cancer. Sad, but apparently true.

Everyone out there who hasn’t had the vaccine and is eligible for it and can afford it should get it. Cancer-watch is no fun. Every-six-month paps are really no fun. Colposcopies (spelling) suck. And these can be avoided almost entirely with the vaccine.

Bah. I agree that cost is a huge issue here–it’s just not currently priced at a mass-vaccination level–but health providers certainly aren’t helping encourage responsibility.

On the other hand, I *can* understand concern over walking the line between encouraging concern & responsibility versus further stigmatizing an already over-stigmatized condition. Any time you have such a wide gap between incidence and awareness, especially with an STD, this is a real worry…

When more evidence of a solid link between oral cancer and HPV comes out, maybe that would encourage universal vaccination?

Also, re: circumcision, it’s not a medically-based decision. It’s cultural practice, and it’s not cool in my opinion. I’m anti-genital cutting for female, male, & intersex. No one should make those decisions for someone else.

And Marista,- I can’t understand why any parent wouldn’t want to protect someone else’s child from CANCER. So your kid wouldn’t get sick – so what – it’s becuase they have magical middle-class powers that prevent them from being a public health menace with their frathouse STDs and their unvaccinated measles, unlike, say, the child in the public housing down the block with her state-funded healthcare who’s clearly a scourge on the neighbourhood.