I guess in the end, the story is that you can do everything right in life and still get blind sided by something that will take your life. I became acutely aware of this in Vietnam, where wearing your flack jacket and helmet, staying close to the ground when the shit hit the fan, and other obvious precautions still did not prevent people who did it all right, from getting shot or killed by some random piece of shrapnel flying through the air. Right next to you. It could have so easily been you instead. You can't predict or avoid everything, and once the die is cast, it is what it is. Even understanding what hurt you does not change much for me. For David it does. People are different.

The moral of the story is there is no way to protect yourself from HPV16. If it enters your life, and your immune system is not prepared (genetically) to deal with it, you have a problem that you won't foresee, can't prevent, and will have to deal with whether you want to or not -but if you spend too much energy and time thinking about it, it takes time that you could be spending thinking about something positive in your life instead. I respect David's desire to know. I am glad he finds some satisfaction in that knowledge. If there were something that you could do with that knowledge (after a cancer diagnosis) I would definitely be on his side of this perspective. The one positive I see in David's interest, is that he has been able to take that knowledge public to educate others. Right now that education is important because people who think they are safe by not smoking, need to know that they cannot skip oral cancer screenings as a mandatory annual event.