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posted by on Sunday April 09 2017, @10:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the my-yoga-teacher-says-vaccines-cause-autism dept.

More than 42 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 59 are infected with genital human papillomavirus [HPV], according to the first survey to look at the prevalence of the virus in the adult population.

The report [pdf], published on Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, found that certain high-risk strains of the virus infected 25.1 percent of men and 20.4 percent of women. These strains account for approximately 31,000 cases of cancer each year, other studies have shown.

Two vaccines are effective in preventing sexually transmitted HPV infection, and researchers said the new data lend urgency to the drive to have adolescents vaccinated.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/health/hpv-virus-survey-united-states.html


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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 10 2017, @02:39PM (4 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday April 10 2017, @02:39PM (#491644)

    because women excrete its hormones

    I thought the issue was flushing The Pill, not...the chemicals after they pass through their bodies?

    P.S. Why would you flush it anyway? Why not just throw it in the trash?

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday April 10 2017, @03:45PM (3 children)

    by butthurt (6141) on Monday April 10 2017, @03:45PM (#491677) Journal

    I don't speak for the other poster, but I understood "flush" to be a euphemism for abortion.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Monday April 10 2017, @04:59PM (2 children)

      by Hyperturtle (2824) on Monday April 10 2017, @04:59PM (#491739)

      I have to believe the problem* is that the liver breaks down the pill for its intended use, and the kidneys excrete whats left after it has circulated through the body and the various reactions have taken place. That is nearly always the expectation for what occurs prior to drug of some kind being found in nature that got there via our disposal habits.

      Very, very few drugs we ingest are perfectly consumed by the body. It's one aspect as to why we have to go to the bathroom, and why we don't emit chemically pure and reusable, tasteless and clear water, and condense masses of unsoluable dietary fiber. It does not work like that, but it'd be nice...

      Instead, to prevent death and other problems, the body excretes such things as the chemicals we ingest, but many do build up in the body (which are not in scope for this reply...)

      Those that get excreted in fact are part of how drug tests work (at least the ones that use urine samples).

      Many ingested drugs make their way in a weakened form into the water we drink, via numerous methods, and are readily detectable. In the case of typical work related drug tests, they search for water soluable drugs that are emitted. Some drugs are more fat soluable and work their way out more slowly, and can be detected as well with different thresholds and methods to check for them. Some atomic elements attach to our bones, look up what testing has found for what can replace calcium in children. (those kids have nuclear waste in their body for their lives because of it, with little of it getting excreted once part of the skeletal system)

      Back on topic, few women would flush The Pill; that is simply too valuable--there are but a few cultures preserve their urine to take that value judgement a step further--such as the tribes in Siberia and related areas that save urine emitted from after having ingested amanita muscarias. Get enough bottles of urine and you can get some of that birth control back, but yuck.

      That tactic would work with many other examples, and our excretions could actually be distilled and fractionated to pull out valuable drugs still in an active form (if not the same exact molecule--changes do occur that are pharmacologically active for many substances ingested)-- but that would not be profitable (nor logistically feasible) to do as opposed to treating it as toxins for clearing via filtration and later disposal of a giant mess of contaminants, and also just simply compared to selling more pills, so instead we flush our wastes away since that's pretty darn convenient for everyone involved.

      Just about any time you hear about this sort of problem, it's presumed that we are flushing what we've ingested, not what was in the bottle -- UNLESS it has to do with antibiotics, then that conversation is about people flushing that bottle of unused pills as opposed to natural excretion.

      Old pills you may have laying around and don't know what to do with--it is best to either throw them away (and let that landfill get poisoned over time by everyone throwing chemicals out), or burn it -- flushing it is an immediate way to put the strongest type of poison available in pill form right into the environment we live in, the other methods at least diminish the immediate effect if the landfills are lined or the incineration breaks it down to less harmful chemicals that then get emitted out a smoke stack in a far less harmful (or beneficial) form.

      **The best way is to try to get what you need and use it as required, but that is not always possible; flushing active medications and paints and industrial chemicals down the toliet is never a viable method even if it is very convenient because it eliminate the chance of kids or pets getting at it. It just leads to the chance of poisoning something else as opposed to something you know. Our water system is fragile and my tax dollars for water treatment shouldn't go into fixing problems caused by ignorance and what was more convenient to someone else.

      *I am not an expert
      **unfounded heavy-handed and biased opinion regarding ingestion and disposal tactics of stuff