yes we all know smoking is bad for your health, but it is time to stop fudging the stats and blaming every illness on smoking and failing to educate the facts that non-smokers can and do die of "smokers diseases" It is deceptive and dangerous to non-smokers who believe they are virtually immune to these "so called" smoking diseases
for the full story http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/17/Floridian/Clues_to_the_cancer.shtml
Clues to the cancer
David Hastings doesn't fit the throat cancer profile. So he looked for answers and was surprised by what he found.
By John Barry Published April 17, 2007
During the grisly battle for his life, David Hastings played medical detective. He read everything he could find on what was trying to kill him. Nothing made sense. Hastings had throat cancer, mostly known for killing old people. Imagine an elderly soul addicted to cigarettes and alcohol for 40 years. There's a likely victim.
Hastings didn't fit. He was 58. He looked 48. He hadn't smoked since college, and he doesn't drink. His chief addiction is cycling. He rides his bike about 100 miles per week.
He'd never have guessed where he finally did fit in.
He did not have an old smoker's disease, after all. His throat had been attacked by a cancer-causing virus infamous for killing women. It was HPV, the human papilloma virus, that causes most cervical cancers. HPV is the virus at the center of a national argument over preventive vaccinations of young girls.
To his great surprise, Hastings discovered that this controversial women's vaccination plan aimed at ridding the world of HPV cancers may have started with the wrong gender.
One day, the answer might be found here. A thousand Tampa men are currently participating in the world's largest study of male HPV infections. The National Institutes of Health has awarded the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa $10-million for the work. It involves 3,000 men worldwide, including the Tampa thousand, and may soon include their female partners. One preliminary finding is a male infection rate double that of women.
Hastings found other studies as well that have long linked HPV to anal and penile cancers. Gay men and men in impoverished countries are most afflicted. They were horror stories - cancers that required the most ghastly of surgical remedies.
By the end of his searches, Hastings had become an official HPV cancer statistic - one of 10,000 American men afflicted by any one of five types of HPV cancers each year. The male number is close to the annual number of HPV cervical cancers detected in women.
Doctors are seeing more and more cases like Hastings': young, nonsmoking men and women who are turning up with oral cancers they aren't supposed to have. There has been an 11 percent increase - after 50 years of constancy - even as smoking has declined. A Chicago conference is planned for June. The maker of the current vaccine for girls is seeking FDA approval to give it to boys, too. Some Johns Hopkins University patients are receiving a new experimental vaccine.
Hastings even found himself briefly inserted into the debate in Tallahassee over requiring vaccinations of schoolgirls. His message to the lawmakers: HPV kills men, too.
