Brian/David,
I mispoke and stand corrected, the proper quote should have been, "Of the HPV-induced oral cancers, 95% are caused by the HPV-16 virus." Do you agree with that? I do not claim to be the expert and am thankful that they exist on this website and in the world of research. Wow! Twenty subsets of HPV-16! I am an engineer by training so you shifted me to another gear of potential analysis. But, as you point out, there is no current clinical relevance.

With regards to my assumption that so few of those that have HPV-16 develop SCC: Again, thank-you for correcting me. I was thinking that such a high percentage of the population has HPV and with only 30K new cases of SCC per year, the percentage is very low. But after your input, I realized that I have never seen any data that would give me the percentage of the population with HPV-16. This is certainly different than the percentage of the population with any strain of HPV. It would be interesting and educational to better understand these facts.

I plan one day to thank Dr. Gillison in person for the research she is doing in the field. My brother is an interventional cardiologist at Johns Hopkins and I will be in Baltimore visiting him sometime in the near future. Brian, would it be appropriate for me to offer to buy her lunch out of gratitude for the work she is doing? I don't want to unfairly impose on her time.

MSG - My SCC was diagnosed when a lypmh node on the right side of my neck was removed. It was swollen and was causing a visible lump on my neck. This was a metastisis from the primary in my tonsil. There were no visible signs of SCC in my tonsil but it did show as "slightly hot" in the PET CT. The primary tumor in my right tonsil was only 8mm when it was removed with clear margins.

I am not knowledgable on screening methods. I defer to Brian and David.

This has been a great site for me through my journey with SCC. Thank you Brian.