• 1/26/2006
  • Washington, DC
  • Cliff Kincaid
  • Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org)

My commentary on the need for Bill Clinton to take the lead in warning teenagers about the dangers of oral sex caught the eye of Brian R. Hill, the founder/ Executive Director of the Oral Cancer Foundation, Inc. He is a stage IV oral cancer survivor.

On the matter of a link between HPV 16, a sexually transmitted virus, and cancer, especially oral cancer, he writes:

“The real data about this has been mostly published by Maura Gillison at Johns Hopkins, and the correlation between HPV 16 in particular and oropharangeal and tonsillar cancers is without doubt, ditto the oral sex /oral cancer issue. There is no doubt that the HPV’s forms which have cancer causing capabilities are on the rise, and the number of young, non-smoking, oral cancer patients has risen dramatically in recent years. While the primary cause, tobacco, has had its use steadily decline for more than 10 years in the U.S., the incidence rate of oral cancer has stayed the same. This would indicate that a new etiology is replacing the old stereotypical mechanism of getting this very deadly disease.

“While you mention a Swedish study, the U.S. is way ahead of others in the peer-reviewed research that shows all this to be a major issue…Though the issue of awareness is critical, and Dr. Gillison even uses the word epidemic when she discusses HPV in the U.S., it is hard to get people of celebrity and power to discuss anything sexual…I wish I could identify someone to come forward and talk about it beside myself. While I have been on numerous TV news stories about it, and lecture on it extensively in many arenas, I am a virtual nobody. The disease and the issues need a celebrity or corporate powerhouse to champion a very deadly disease that kills someone in the U.S. every hour of every day. Our efforts to raise public awareness have not gone unnoticed, and our website (below) gets 15 million hits a month.”

The website of the oral cancer foundation is http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/

Hill says a celebrity is needed to discuss the link between oral sex and cancer. Will Bill Clinton step forward? He should do so. He did more than anyone else to make oral sex into a household topic for young people and adults alike. And he told the nation under oath that it really wasn’t sex, making it seem attractive or harmless. The disgraced former president can be contacted through his Clinton Foundation at [email protected] If he won’t step forward to take on this campaign, perhaps he can ask Monica Lewinsky to fill in for him.

I agree that it is a risk for Clinton. It’s much easier for him to step forward as a former junk food junkie who ate too many hamburgers. We can all laugh about that, even though he did have to get a heart bypass operation. It’s much tougher for him to step forward and admit that he exploited a young girl for oral sex and is sorry about it. But that’s why the media, if they had any integrity, would challenge him. They can ask him about giving up junk food. Why not ask him about immoral, unhealthy and compulsive sexual behavior?

It’s a matter of life and death.