Alie Ward

This is a topic that just fresh off of the title, I think a lot of people grew up thinking STDs.

Now we call them STIs.

Can you explain a little bit about that change?

And as you may have learned in our recent Venusology episode about the fascinating planet of love with the galactically charming Dr. Vicki Hansen, Venus is, was the Roman goddess of love, and hence venereal means of or pertaining to sexual desire or intercourse.

Hell yeah, people who've had sexually transmitted infections for untold millennia.

There's this one ancient Greek royal who reportedly bagged her king's dong in a goat bladder because he had inadvertently killed his mistress with jizz containing scorpions and serpents, they thought.

So listen, VD or sexually transmitted infections, they are not new.

And remedies these days, they're much less sticky and stinky than a goat's bladder.

Praise Zeus.

HPV, just FYI, stands for human papillomavirus.

And according to the Centers for Disease Control, there are a couple types.

There's the wart-causing virus, which is non-oncogenic or not cancer-causing.

And then there's the oncogenic.

which is cancer-causing variety, which is responsible just in the US alone for about 36,000 cases of cancer a year in areas like the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anus, and the back of the throat, which is called oropharyngeal cancer, including the base of the tongue and the tonsils.

Are you freaking out?

Don't.

Research shows that nearly everyone who is not

vaccinated will get HPV at some point in their lives and that most HPV active infections go away by themselves within two years.

And we do live in the point of history where there are vaccines for this.

So we're going to talk more about those in a bit.