There has been lots of news story coverage of all this in major media, each time as one of the research papers we have been part of sponsoring has been published, and of course in our TV PSA's with Blythe Danner and Jack Klugman. But at the end of the day, we are not going to do anything about the incidence rate of this in our generation. We have a published paper in the last 6 months with the NCI as our co sponsor looking at 2020 and the number of HPV+ oral cancers is going to be much worse - there is nothing we are going to do about that. We might be able to get earlier discovery to take place (that is both a professional and public problem) and that will make some progress against the death rate, but it is going to take another generation or two to really see the incidence number drop. That will be because enough people vaccinate their kids, male and female for protection from the HPV16 virus, and they never get HPV+ diseases at all (oral, cervical, anal, penis, and potentially others that we are just beginning to track and explore).

But you are not going to get people to stop kissing or having oral sex, that is not realistic. Also keep in perspective the total incidence rate of the disease in proportion to the population; it is small, and from that total, that 50% or so are coming form the virus. The odds of being one of the unlucky chosen ones like me, are small overall. Besides, prohibition of anything has never worked not in alcohol, drugs, prostitution, and certainly not in what is essentially a normal physical activity. Since men are the majority of those diagnosed, "protection" would involve using a rubber dam or something similar when performing the oral sex act, and that isn't going to happen either, it's not as simple to use as putting on a condom.