This week Michael Douglas made some controversial comments about how he got his throat cancer – from going down on his lady friends. Lady Friday is here to tell you all the facts…
The poor interviewer really didn’t see it coming – as it were.
The Guardian newspaper had sat down with Michael Douglas, who is famously recovering from neck and throat cancer, to discuss what may have caused it. In the past, he’d speculated on TV that it was probably due to years of smoking and drinking.
However, this time he had a different answer – and it caused a sensation.
“Without wanting to get too specific,” Douglas said, “this particular cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus.”
The press went mad, Douglas’s ex-wife came out publicly to say she’d never had HPV in her life, and now Rescu. is here to assess the truth.
Basically, here’s Douglas’s situation (though his publicist now denies he ever said this, probably because it sounded like boasting about all the sex he’d had with Catherina Zeta Jones): that he’d caught the Human Papilloma Virus through oral sex, and that it was the specific sort that caused throat cancer.
So is this true? The short answer is: probably yes. Before you panic, here are all the facts, in case your boyfriend refuses to go down on you ever again.
First of all, the fact that Douglas could get throat cancer from HPV, which is in many cases a sexually transmitted disease, is entirely likely. There are more than 150 types of HPV, but one in particular, HPV 16, which is primarily found in the genitals, has been shown to cause very particular types of oral cancer, around the tonsils and the base of the mouth.
This was only discovered about five years ago, hence the widespread disbelief in the press – but it’s a real connection.
So if Douglas got one of those very specific cancers, then chances are he’s exactly right, and very, very unlucky.
Nearly 60% of all oesophagus cancers are caused by HPV, and it’s easy for doctors to tell whether they’re HPV-related by where in the mouth they grow.
The good news? Well, for one, if you’ve had the HPV vaccine as many Australian women now have, you’re far less at risk of passing any HPV to your partner or contracting it, because it specifically combats HPV 16 and 18 (the latter sometimes causes cervical cancer).
For another, there are many different strains of HPV, and many are cleared up, particularly by female immune systems, before they can develop into anything serious. 80% of all sexually active women will get HPV at some point in their lives, most with absolutely no ill effects for them or their partners.
And even if you carry HPV and pass it onto your partner via oral sex, “far, far more people carry the virus in their throats than actually develop cancer,” says an expert at University College London.
For instance, nearly 16 million Americans currently have HPV, of whom only about 17,000 will get oral cancer – a tiny fraction.
Even if you’re diagnosed, if you have it in your vagina, it also can’t get to your mouth – it doesn’t travel through the body. Breathe a sigh of relief, everybody.
Here are more facts: HPV is spread by skin-to-skin contact and oral sex, and most commonly manifests itself as genital warts. It can lie dormant for years, which means that even if Pap smears come back normal, it can still be hanging around.
There aren’t any HPV tests for men, but it’s estimated that nearly 60% of all men will have it at some point.
The way that HPV spreads means that even using a condom or dental dam may not particularly help – it’s both the fluids and the skin itself, both in and around the genitalia, that are risk factors.
Oral HPV infections are much more common in men than in women, for reasons nobody really understands, but it can definitely happen the other way around – Women’s Health did a huge story on women who contracted oral cancer from HPV just last year.
So here’s the situation: always go for your yearly Pap smears, make sure your injections are up to date, use protection and keep an eye on any symptoms that seem unusual, but don’t worry unduly.
Lady Friday xx
Taking the pillow talk out of the bedroom, every Friday…
