...for Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil®, a quadrivalent HPV vaccine that would theoretically protect against throat cancer caused by this virus.

Current recommendations are for preteen girls to get vaccinated against HPV to protect them for a lifetime against this most common cause of cervical cancers. Now, it's clear that girls, gay boys, and even straight boys who might contract the virus by kissing girls who might contract the virus by oral sex, would also benefit by preventing a majority of throat cancers.

With this virus causing so much human misery, it's only a matter of time before the recommendation is that EVERY child get vaccinated against it, which if followed, could actually eradicate the virus in our lifetime, much as polio and smallpox were largely eradicated in prior generations due to vaccination programs.

The current opponents of the recommendation of vaccinating girls base their opposition on the canard that the act of vaccination is tantamount to a recommendation to begin sexual activity. Nonsense, obviously. Now that boys are potentially victims, and kissing is possibly a transmission vector, maybe the sexophobic troglodytes will come around to accepting the idea that HPV is a dangerous human disease, is preventable, that protecting life is more important than proselytizing preposterous dogma, and we ought to vaccinate our children to protect them.