By: Antoine Craigwell
23 December 2010
Early one fall morning, 26-year-old Mark Ramos (not his real name) walked into the New York-based Callen-Lorde Community Health Center for a routine medical check up. After several questions about his sexual practices, Mark consented to a rectal exam. He dropped his pants and underwear and climbed up on to the exam table in a kneeling position. The doctor cautioned that he would feel a slight discomfort as he swabbed Mark’s anus and took the male equivalent of a pap smear. Two weeks later, Mark received a call and was advised that the pap smear revealed that there was a suggestion of the presence of abnormal cells and was invited to come in for a colposcopy, a more thorough examination; the male equivalent of a cervical exam.
Except for that heightened fashion sense, creativity, artistry, and culinary skills, men who have sex with men (MSM) do have at least one thing in common with women: one of the effects of the human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer in women and anal cancer in MSM. Over the years knowledge and treatment for this virus has gradually “come out” of the classification as a women only problem, where more and more MSM are receiving examinations, screenings, and treatment, if precancerous cells are discovered. Anal cancer came to prominence recently with the death of Farah Fawcett.
In what was once in the medical domain of women, when high intensity focused ultrasound was used to treat ovarian cancer and is now used for prostate cancer in other countries and still in the U.S. FDA Phase Trials for use in men, that MSM are at an increased risk for anal cancer from the same virus that causes cervical cancer in women. Researchers have discovered that HPV, often present under the foreskin of uncircumcised men, when it comes in contact with the cells of the cervix or anus, mutates and leads to cancer in women and in men, who have unprotected penetrative sex. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on their Website lists throat and neck cancer also related to the same virus.
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