Cervical Security

For the eighty percent of sexually active Americans who already have a latent case of HPV, the emergent practice of vaccination has already come to late. The virus is already at large in our bodies, although localized almost exclusively to the surfaces (both internal and external). For the men out there, this news comes with a resounding shrug. It barely effects our gender, restricted to the occasional awkward lump. We face no real threat from it, a virus so weak that it is actually not detectable unless there is an actual wart.

For women, on the other hand, the complications are far more extensive than an awkward moment between yourself, your partner, and later your doctor. Human Papilloma Virus is a cancer inducing bugger, a particle capable of initiating chemical reactions that will drastically reduce your body's capability to defend itself from the host of offensive insults trying to redefine your DNA. With how common infection is, perhaps it is appropriate that HPV affects the ubiquitin system, a series of proteins serving as a cellular trash disposal. An overstimulation drives a system into overdrive, and it starts attacking and removing the P53 cancer sentinels of your cells. Without these P53 sentinels, your cells have no way to initiate cell suicide if the worst happens, and the cell goes bad.

With this, the cells are left open to environmental attack, and the next mutation will trigger expansion and growth, invasion and metastasis. The cells of the cervix are laid open to their detractors, and the risk of cervical cancer has skyrocketed.

This is an intriguing phenomenon. A communicable cancer (albeit one that can, in another one of the universe's cruel gestures, only affect women), spread by a virus. A cancer that we can effectively immunize everyone against, with just one shot.

Delightful.