# Oral Sex Causes Cancer?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 21, 2007, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912 "2007-05-21T11:47:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/1 "2007-05-21T11:47:19Z")
Well, not quite, but apparently there are now claims that it promotoes it _more than smoking_: > [@](#): > > First the bad news—and you better sit down, because it’s really, really bad: If you and your girlfriend have had more than five oral-sex partners in your lives, PBA, you are both 250 percent more likely to develop throat cancer than some sad asshole who’s never had oral sex. Researchers are too polite to point this out, but I’m not: Most Americans eat pussy and swallow cock. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 90 percent of straight men and 88 percent of straight women report engaging in oral sex. Half of all American teenagers have had oral sex; by age 19, the number rises to 70 percent. > > “Researchers believe,” reports New Scientist, “[that] oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers,” and the virus lodges in the throat, where it can cause cancer. Study subjects infected with HPV were 32 times more likely to develop throat cancer; folks who tested positive for one highly aggressive strain of the virus, HPV-16, were 58 times more likely to develop throat cancer. Smoking, previously believed to be the culprit behind most throat cancers, only triples a person’s risk. (A new slogan for the tobacco industry: “Smoke cigs, not pole.”) This from the latest entry (May 17, 2007) in Dan Savage’s column **Savage Love**. read here, for instance: > **[Savage.Love Magnum Subscription](https://www.thestranger.com/all-gifts/savagelove-magnum-subscription-78725432/)** > > Give the Gift of Dan Savage's Perverted Wisdom! Anyone else read or hear anything about this? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/2 "2007-05-21T11:50:22Z")
More “respectable” link: > **[The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/kimmel-cancer-center)** > > Patients who visit the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins have access to some of the world's most innovative and advanced therapies. Original Paper from the New England Journal of Medicine: [http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/19/1944?ijkey=qVEw4puuEh6zQ&keytype=ref&siteid=nejm](http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/19/1944?ijkey=qVEw4puuEh6zQ&keytype=ref&siteid=nejm) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/3 "2007-05-21T12:40:59Z")
Maybe you find [this link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=420258) usefull. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/4 "2007-05-21T12:48:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Maybe you find this link usefull. Ah. Butr I never woulda guessed the content from the title. (And you’d think a Librarian would use descriptive titles) ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/5 "2007-05-21T12:55:34Z")
Well I’ll be blowed…oh wait! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/6 "2007-05-21T13:54:43Z")
I just re-read my reply – and it wasn’t meant to be nasty, which is how it reads. Please add a smiley. 🙂😉😃 :smack: ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/7 "2007-05-21T13:55:54Z")
Maybe I should add the following as well, for different people and different reasons: 😛 :o :eek: ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/8 "2007-05-21T14:03:46Z")
Does this mean men should get the new HPV vaccine too? Just in case they’ve been “down” a lot? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oral-sex-causes-cancer/404912/9 "2007-05-21T14:16:38Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] I just re-read my reply – and it wasn’t meant to be nasty, which is how it reads. Please add a smiley. 🙂😉😃 :smack: [/QUOTE] Don’t worry 🙂 It was indeed the least descritive title I could come up with. But in my defense I put it in MPSIMS.