Now that I have you wondering what on earth is "outercourse", you might as well read the full column if you consider yourself a normal human being with sexual drive, and even more important, if you have children aged from 9 to 26 specially girls, who ultimately commit the act.
What you read will at the very least educate you, make you sleep better and even save your life.
For the longest time everyone treated cancer as one collective bowl of diseases that had something to do with genes or vice such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or exposure to cancer causing chemicals and food.
But because of all the funding, commitment to research, and efforts, mankind has managed to differentiate between genetic cancers, chemically triggered cancers, and now viral caused cancers.
I recently read studies about how the dreaded killer of women known as cervical cancer has been linked to a Virus. Being male, this was news to me since I simply assumed that cervical cancer was a genetic cancer or something that runs in the family.
I guess this is the result of the medical protocol that keeps telling us if someone in the family had a particular disease, there is a possibility that we could develop the same disease.
The Virus known as the Human Papilloma virus or HPV is the very culprit that doctors have tried to screen for when women go for Pap smears.
So now that I knew it was a virus, how then do women get it?
The conventional answer pointed to the usual suspects: MEN. At least that was the initial thought. Given that men are more sexually active before and in several cases even after marriage, it was a matter of passing the virus around.
But the VIRUS is much like a UFO we have a term for it, we see its effects, we see traces of its existence, but for us ordinary people it’s the medical equivalent of the word FAITH or CURSE. When it was a less complex matter we called it germs until life got more complex.
The HPV virus unlike the cold or a UFO is unfortunately a potential source for many nightmares because it can cause genital warts or most certainly kill you by giving you cervical cancer.
Since its suppose to be a female problem, the only time men take notice or worry about the problem is when they discover a colony of warts taking residence on their penile best friend or up their ass. When the wife discovers an invasion of her property it becomes both a medical and domestic bomb.
Unfortunately, cervical cancer like many of its relatives is also a Silent Killer. Unnoticed and untreated, it will kill your wife, your daughter, your mother, your sister.
I personally know of two women who died in their forties because of cervical cancer. It’s a horrible way to die for the patient and it is a specially defeating loss to their family who know there is no cure at the advanced stage.
With this initial information, my instinct told me to campaign to educate men. To tell them that screwing around could ultimately make them the very killers of the people they love.
But before I even got on my high horse I learned of the term "Outercourse".
The term Outercourse evolved as the defining term for sexual activity aside from intercourse.
Cases of virgins having cervical cancer initially surprised and stumped researchers until they found out that the so-called virgins may have been "hymenally" intact but had experienced extensive contact.
At the time when young kids or young adults begin to "experiment", actual intercourse may not be par for the course but they do a lot of oral and mechanical manipulation.
To be quite frank many couples know how they creatively compromised as young adults by way of heavy petting by hand, partial penetration, or oral sex.
In this regard it may not even be a sexually transmitted disease since it is a Virus. Which would for the most part explain why even nuns have become statistics of cervical cancer. In this regard, HPV is amoral, non-sectarian, and apolitical.
What it is, is a killer of women who fall when its too late to do anything, when the cure can sometimes be worse than the disease.
So cervical cancer turns out to be the end game and not the beginning of the end. What starts it all is a virus which mercifully can now be vaccinated against in same fashion as we vaccinate our children for Polio, Hepatitis, etc.
The USFDA recently approved the vaccine called Gardasil which acts on four of the major disease causing HPV particularly with cervical cancer and genital warts. In the US, the three-shot vaccine from Merck is estimated at $300 but experts believe that the worldwide market would drive the price lower due to the large scale volume of potential users.
If a competing product made by Glaxo clears in the EU, it is expected to reduce costs even more. In real life costs, a Nokia 9500 would be equivalent to the life of three kids, a prada limited edition handbag would be the life of 30 girls who wont have to die the painful death that comes with cervical cancer.
Hopefully, proactive individuals such as Secretary Duque of the Department of Health can designate a team that would specialize on such preventable diseases of women.
Government more than any entity or NGO has the buying power, the negotiating power which could make such vaccines as GARDASIL affordable to many dollar earning OFWs, to the OFL or Ordinary Filipino Lang who pay more taxes than OFWs.
Secretary Duque might also consider getting the help of Ch. 4, Ch. 9 & 13 as well as all the misused public information facilities and services of government to educate people about health care, vaccination and OUTERCOURSE.