STD Awareness: Eliminating HPV-Related Cancers

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Anna C.

Earlier this month, every major cancer center and organization in the country released a joint statement calling for the elimination of cervical cancer, along with all other HPV-related cancers. The elimination of a large swath of cancers might sound like a tall order — so far, we’ve only eradicated two viruses from the planet: smallpox and rinderpest. And we’re on the brink of getting rid of a third, the virus that causes polio.

But doing away with human papillomavirus (HPV) would herald a new chapter in disease eradication, because HPV causes cancer, meaning that eradicating HPV will eradicate the cancers caused by it. And the good news is we have all the tools we need to wipe HPV off the face of the earth — we just need to use them.

The tools to wipe a large class of cancers off the face of the earth are right under our noses — we just have to use them.

A quick rundown on HPV is in order. It’s the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world, and causes multiple cancers — cervical, head and neck, anal, vulvar, vaginal, and penile. While it’s most well-known for causing cervical cancer, here in the United States it is transitioning away from its old job, causing more head-and-neck cancers than cervical cancers. Nearly all sexually active people will be infected with HPV at least once in their lives, and though only a fraction of infections progress to cancer, its ubiquity means it still causes hundreds of thousands of cancers every year. In the United States, around 41,000 HPV-related cancers are diagnosed annually, while more than 600,000 are diagnosed worldwide. Continue reading →

STD Awareness: UK Announces “Worst-Ever” Case of Gonorrhea

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Anna C.

In late March, the BBC reported a story that was widely repeated in headlines across the world: “Man has ‘world’s worst’ super-gonorrhoea.”

The article told the story of a British man whose symptoms started in early 2018, about a month after he had picked up the bug during a visit to Southeast Asia. Once back home, his doctors were unable to cure it with the standard combination of azithromycin and ceftriaxone — “the first time the infection cannot be cured with first choice antibiotics,” the author wrote.

In most of the world, we don’t have a good picture of antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea.

Actually, a similar case of multidrug-resistant gonorrhea had been documented in the United Kingdom in late 2014, as noted in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was the first verified case to fail to be cured by the azithromycin/ceftriaxone combo — the infection didn’t go away until after the patient was given a double dose of both antibiotics, but by then it had been 112 days and the infection could have cleared on its own. By July 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) had noted that there had been multiple documented cases of gonorrhea that were “untreatable by all known antibiotics.”

What was different about the man in the BBC story was that his case of ceftriaxone-resistant gonorrhea had a higher level of azithromycin resistance than those that came before. While it may not have truly been the first case of multidrug-resistant gonorrhea that couldn’t be treated with the standard dual therapy of azithromycin and ceftriaxone, it was the “most serious.” Continue reading →

Take Back the Night and the Clothesline Project: The Anniversaries of Two Anti-Violence Movements

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Matt

Take Back the Night rally in the 1980s. Photo: University of Wisconsin

The statistics on violence against women can be jarring. One out of every four women in the United States reports being assaulted by a current or former partner. And every day, three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends. At 2 million injuries per year, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury among women. It means that a woman is assaulted every nine seconds in the United States.

As shocking as these statistics are, evidence from crime reports and community surveys indicates that women are safer today than they were 30 to 40 years ago. Domestic violence and violent crime in general have fallen significantly since the 1970s and 1980s. It was that past era that set the stage for an anti-violence movement that turns 40 this month.

The silence of their victims and the indifference of their communities give amnesty to the perpetrators of gender-based violence.

In October of 1975, the fatal stabbing of a Philadelphia woman shook the community and brought people into the streets to take a stand against relationship and gender-based violence. A young microbiologist named Susan Alexander Speeth was walking home at night when she was attacked and killed only a block from her home.

Following the killing, campus area residents organized a candlelit march through the neighborhood. It was a response not only to the tragedy but also to warnings that women should stay inside to keep similar tragedies from happening again. The people who marched that night wanted to send a clear message: They refused to let the solution to violence fall on its victims, or to let safety mean that their work, family, and community commitments would be secondary. Their protest spawned a movement. Continue reading →

From Phoenix to Washington — And the World: A Short History of the Transgender Pride Flag

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Matt

Monica Helms (right) holding up her Transgender Pride Flag

November is the month for transgender pride and awareness events. In some communities, it’s one day in November: One of the most widespread observations is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which is held every November 20. In others, TDOR is part of a longer observation, Transgender Awareness Week. Elsewhere, the whole month is devoted to the theme. Noteworthy, too, have been grassroots efforts organized at TransParentDay.org to make the first Sunday in November a celebration of transgender parents.

Phoenix, Arizona, is the birthplace of the Transgender Pride Flag.

However they’re timed, these events share common themes. They are occasions for transgender people and their allies to remember victims of transphobic violence. They are opportunities to assert rights, dignity, and a place in society — to demand the visibility and respect that transgender people are too often denied.

Transgender visibility has also been strengthened by a powerful symbol that first made its appearance at the Phoenix Pride Parade in 2000. Since the creation in the 1970s of the rainbow flag, a symbol shared broadly by LGBTQ people, several newer flags have appeared, each representing sexual and gender identity groups within the LGBTQ community. In 1999, Michael Page, the creator of the Bisexual Pride Flag, suggested to longtime Phoenix resident Monica Helms that she create a similar flag for the transgender community. Continue reading →