How safe is so-called "oral sex"?
In both cases the safety is less than advertised in U.S. popular media. And, in both cases, we were first alerted to the dangers through our work with heterogeneous substances.
In the case both of sex involving the use of birth control pills and of oral sex, the problem is contact with sperm. Sperm is highly heterogeneous. The heterogeneity of sperm is due to the cell-division process, meiosis, by which sperm are generated. As a result, the use of birth control pills makes it more likely that a woman will get cervical cancer; and oral sex makes it more likely that a person of either sex will get oral cancer. The reader may want to look at a related article on this site concerning the carcinogenic effect of heterogeneous substances:
CLICK HERE TO VIEW ARTICLE
If the reader is skeptical regarding birth control pills and cervical cancer, the link below is to a page posted by the American Cancer Society on the subject.
AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY PAGE
Or, if the reader is doubtful about oral sex and oral cancer, perhaps the following quote will prove persuasive. The quote is from Scientific American of January 1987 (p53). It is somewhat technical. The author was Dr. Robert C. Gallo, a pioneer in AIDS research. He wrote that people infected with HIV have, “an increased risk of at least three types of human tumor: Kaposi’s sarcoma, carcinomas (including skin cancers often seen in the mouth or rectum of infected homosexuals) and B-cell lymphomas….”
In that article Dr. Gallo wasn’t actually interested in whether or not oral sex is dangerous. However the incidental information he provided in the above quote in the course of developing his primary topic implies that oral sex is indeed dangerous.
We believe oral sex acts are dangerous regardless of whether or not they are heterosexual or homosexual. The aspect that’s dangerous is exposure to sperm.
Information sometimes comes from sources other than scientific papers. We’ve knocked around some and have sometimes been exposed to the rough side of life. We’ve known a number of individuals, including both sexes, who have either told us directly that they have engaged in oral sex or whose circumstances in life suggested such activity--and who either had experienced oral cancer or had developed a large cyst on the neck.
In our opinion, there's little doubt that oral sex can cause oral cancer. It would be very easy to determine the matter with animal experiments. But the government hasn't shown much interest, apparently because the subject is regarded as politically sensitive. In our view this somewhat belies the suposed high moral posture of the Bush administration.