Anal cancer

Before Michael Jackson's death wiped the topic clean, the media were preparing for another slow news day of not being honest about Obamacare with wall to wall coverage of Farrah Fawcett's death, a woman who had both insurance and personal wealth. From Michael's death we'll hear all about drugs (all speculation since the toxicology reports take a long time); from her death we might find out something we don't hear much about--anal cancer.

So I looked it up. This is a topic even the medical sites treat pretty delicately. I'm not sure, but they seem to be afraid of offending someone or some group. But what I gathered was, don't have anal sex. Gay guys don't have much choice. But women can say NO--there is an alternative.

Anal cancer is one of those cancers no one likes to talk about because it's, well, anal cancer. But we really should discuss it as much as, say, cervical cancer. Both are predominately caused by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. In fact, a 2004 study of 6,000 anal cancer patients (the majority of whom were women) found that 73 percent of the patients tested positive for the strain HPV-16, one of the strains that the Gardasil vaccine protects against.

What's worrisome is that unlike cervical cancer, which has dropped dramatically since the advent of the Pap smear, anal cancer is on the rise. Incidence rates over the past 30 years have jumped by 78 percent in women and 160 percent in men, probably because more people now have more sexual partners and more people have anal sex (both among heterosexuals and gay men), says Lisa Johnson, a cancer epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who led the 2004 study. "What Farrah Fawcett can teach us about anal cancer"

It's not just a convenient way to avoid a pregnancy or some new experience to be talked into; it's just a way to have sex with a guy who'd probably prefer to be with another guy and you're the convenient cover and the repository for a sexually transmitted disease. That's just my opinion, of course. The anus is for waste removal, not sex. It's also rather delicate and tears easily.

The good news is this is treatable.

Treatment for most cases of anal cancer is very effective. There are 3 basic types of treatment used for anal cancer:
surgery – an operation to remove the cancer
radiation therapy – high-dose x-rays to kill cancer cells, and
chemotherapy – giving drugs to kill cancer cells. Link.

James Line at OSU on anal cancer.

Now here's a romantic slide to think on the next time.